Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
Knowing Selflessness Destroys Misknowledge
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
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 26/6/88
Transcribed by Frank Carter
Checked by Lainie Smallwood
CD Reference
26_06_88T6S2i
File Name: 26_06_88T6S2i_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
Recording Title: "Knowing Selflessness Destroys Misknowledge"
Alright, so the feelings don't know they're feelings. So an unhappy, an unpleasant feeling doesn't know it’s unpleasant, and a pleasant feeling doesn't know it’s pleasant. So the mind, since the unpleasant feeling doesn't torment itself by not knowing, it’s just a mental event, since the unpleasant feeling doesn't feel unpleasant about being unpleasant, why do you through all these countless lifetimes generate a mind that believes, that does something that the unpleasant feeling can't do?
The unpleasant feeling is just a mental event. It doesn't torment itself. Now what your ego does, it takes the unpleasant feeling, it makes it false, it pretends that the unpleasant feeling knows it is unpleasant. So it transforms something into an unreality and then it owns the unreal experience and what pops out of your whingeing ego mind is this: “I feel unpleasant”. Well, you've done something that the unpleasant feeling is incapable of doing. Unpleasant is, doesn't know that.
Now there was a man who lived to be about 450 years old, near Tibet. He meditates a lot for about 20 years in very high meditation, comes out, goes and visits the village. He's been photographed, reported. He doesn't age. On one of the times he taught the villagers, one of the wise villagers said to him, "How come you live so long whereas we all die?" You know like his Grandfather had met him his great Grandfather. He said, "How come your body lasts so long?" And this man said, he said, "I spend so much time remembering the past, and I spend so much time remembering the future", you know with clairvoyance, perfect clairvoyance, he said, "I have forgotten the present and that's how I live so long".
So if you go on that basis, we would set it up like this, and do his meditation for a while. The infinite past is unreal, the infinite future yet to come is unreal, is real, sorry. The infinite past is real, the infinite future is real, this tick, tick, tick, tick, tick point where you sit now, where past kamma is transformed by your ego to make future kamma, is unreal. When there is no interruption with the past flowing into the future, then you’re in a much better position, because the activity of the misinformation is such that you’re so mad keen to experience the present that you'll do anything, including turning an unpleasant feeling that has no nature of the fact it’s unpleasant, it still, even when you pull it to yourself, it still doesn't know it’s unpleasant. But then your ego, which is unreal,owns something and claims itself to be in a higher state than the feeling itself.
So this is the way the ego struts and postures on stage. It says, "Although that unpleasant feeling has no knowledge of itself, I, clever dick that I am, know the unpleasant feeling to be unpleasant, and I experience the unpleasant. So what is that mind? What is that “I”? It's an unreal fantasy mind, and you prefer an unreal fantasy mind, you make that your chief, you make that your master, you become the slave of an unreal mind holding misinformation. You've always been like that, and unless something happens for countless lifetimes in the future it will be the same.
And you call that “me”. “Poor me”, you say. Well why do you do it? Why did you make such a mind? Well the answer is you've had it forever. Forever you've been in ignorance. There wasn't a time when you were enlightened and you broke your enlightenment and somehow came to this. It’s just a habit, you've got a very bad habit.
You're guarding something with all your effort that's not worth a crumpet, or a piece of toast, or a salami sandwich, or a piece of coconut ice, or a pickled onion. It is utterly, completely, absolutely worthless. It's thwarting to your five groups and it's thwarting to other people.
Now, this is the situation. Your refuge is in that unreal ego mind. That is what you place as the highest value. However when you look at other people you see them as five groups. You refuse to see that other people have got that unreal I, my, mine, me mind. You listen to the stream of their descriptions of their torment and their pain and you just say, "I don't know what they’re bitching about. They’re well fed, their happy". Now you can't see other people’s situation until you get rid of that unreal mind.
And we went through yesterday a whole set of events of raising the, you know on how to do. So there's a method given to you yesterday of how to do it. I'm not going to repeat yesterday. But I'm just going to make you enthusiastic hopefully.
So there is two situations; there is you with your five groups just like everyone else. There’s no different to, like, every sentient being is five groups. We're all the same in that matter except we've got the results of our wholesome and unwholesome kamma [to] make our lives different. So, for example. if pleasant feeling come to me there's no guarantee the pleasant feeling will come to you at the same time.
Just occasionally pleasant feeling comes to you, pleasant feeling comes to me and then you say,"Oh, I like you, I like you". But when unpleasant feeling comes you can't see my pleasant feeling. It's like you go blind. I'm in pleasant feeling, pleasant feeling, pleasant feeling. Pleasant feeling, pleasant feeling, pleasant feeling. I don't follow you. I'm not your kamma. You are your kamma, I’m mine.
How did I get like this? Well, I did the meditation you're doing now.
That's how I got here. When you cease your ego mind you will be able to
say statements like this: "Pleasant feeling comes, pleasant feeling goes.
Unpleasant feeling comes, unpleasant feeling goes. Happiness comes,
happiness goes, praise comes, praise goes, blame comes, blame comes".
You will see in a non relativistic way.
Whereas, you see what happens, unpleasant feeling comes and you say, "Something's going wrong, yesterday I was happy. Yesterday I was happy, yesterday I was happy. Now I'm unhappy, unhappy, unhappy". Then pleasant feeling comes you say, "Pleasant feeling comes, pleasant feeling comes, yesterday I was unhappy now I'm pleasant. Oh, this is great mate. Oh wow, wow, cosmic, wow, wow, wow. Then unpleasant feeling comes. "Oh this bloody meditation gives me the ***, oh, wa, wa, wa, wa". It’s not the meditation that's doing it, it’s your kamma.
And then you say, this comes, "Oh body pain, body pain, body pain". I say, "Let go of your body". "Oh, I want to hang on to it". Well, if you, anything you grab at, what does the grabbing? The ego mind, which is unreal, doesn't even grab the correct reality. It won't have a bar of reality. It makes like an unreal reflection of whatever it looks at. Because if it put a real reflection in, you can't put a real feeling into an unreal ego mind. So you're living on reflected fantasies.
In this sense it's true when the Buddha says the world's mad. See if sanity is knowing reality as it is, then what do you call people who make their life, who assert, who assert, “This is me, and it doesn't matter what you say, I'm going to have a hard time”. And I say to you, "You don't have to have a hard time". And you say, "Oh, that's alright for you, you've done all that meditation". You fantasize. How much meditation can I do? I can only do one second, one second, one second. In normal conventional terms the present is real, the past is unreal.
All I can do is sit here driven by all the results of my wholesome and unwholesome kamma from the past. But when my unwholesome kamma comes I just say, "Ah”, and I'm a tricky dickey, I say, "What to do?, what to do? Oh, offer light to Buddha, that will shut me up. Oh, what will I do now, offer flower to Buddha. That will shut me up".
What do you do? "Oh. I'm unhappy, I'm unhappy. Boo hoo, poor me, poor me, poor me”. What do you want me to say? There, there dear, your unhappiness will increase because you treat it as so precious, you talk about it, breath it, live it, eat it. What do you really like doing? Do you like having a hard time or do you like having a fun time? Which do you like doing? Well if you want to have a fun time, if that's really your goal, you keep five precepts and you practise generosity and you follow the instructions.
But if you really want to have a hard time, you just go on perpetuating your unwholesome, unwise, dumb bum behaviour patterns. And if you think your behaviour pattern is virtuous, well if it was virtuous you'd be the happiest people in the world. And I've met the happiest people in the world, in fact I'm the East, I'm the manufacturer of happiest people in the world. I got the East coast distributing franchise and the West coast and the North Coast and the South coast.
But if you taught other people what you know habitually, what would
your teachings be? See it's no good saying life's tough and that's the way
it is. That's not an answer. Life's tough but it can become sweet. Life's
dukkha but it can become sukkha. That is the teaching of the Buddha. So
the Buddha teaches about dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, the cause of the
dukkha, the origin of the dukkha, how, what caused it, and the Path
leading out of the dukkha. The net result of Buddhist practice is complete
and utter sukkha forever, paranibbana. Now what is it that forces you to,
apparently forces you, to listen to your habit kamma? It is this; that you
cherish the unreal ego as your most precious
possession.
Because if it vanishes, what happens? Nirvana. So you sit in nirvana now. Now if you have great compassion you see outside your nirvana the samsara. You see the beings in samsara suffering, suffering, suffering. From nirvana view, all you see is oceans, universes of suffering. If you look back into the past, you will see you had oceans of suffering. And what was the cause of it? What was the cause of it? What was the cause? Well, the cause was doing, cultivating the unreal and not paying attention to the real. So sit in nirvana and listen to the Dhamma.
“In the Introductory Commentary by Chandra, Chandra affirms that delusion is misknowledge”, delusion is “superficial with a nature of obscuration, seeing intrinsic realities in things”, seeing what isn't there if you like. Like a conjurer will produce happenings that aren't real, your ego sees things that aren't real.
And that's the only thing it can do. Because it's unreal itself, it can't see anything that's real.
So when you see and reinforce the reality in things born of conditions, which means your own present existence in the samsara side, when you say "Oh I'm really real", and ignore impermanent, dukkha and anatta as you see now, that's what the teacher calls misknowledge. “Seeing truly and knowing well the emptiness of phenomena, misknowledge does not occur”, because by seeing truly the misknowledge ceases, “thereby the twelve members cease”, the steps of dependent-origination where you’re making fresh kamma, ceases.
So this habit of reification of the reality in things indicates the habitual perception of truth. You see, the truth is, life is real, life is earnest. In fact it's just a series of events going across your mind. The citta knows, that is the one characteristic of the citta. The citta is enlightened mind. That nirvana is not your property, no one owns nirvana, it's not a being, it's not a thing, it has no taste, no smell, no touch, no mind, it's just what it is.
In the Jewel Rosary Nagarjuna says, "As long as there is the aggregate habit", the packet of the five groups, churning away, churning, churning, churning, appearing and disappearing at you, as long as there's that, now as long as you are not in nirvana, as long as you fall out of nirvana, and touch back on that aggregate habit, then there will be an “I”.
Until you discern rupa is rupa, vedana is vedana, no owner, no one owns. No one owns the Buddha, no one owns the Dhamma, no one owns the Sangha. The Dhamma is not your property, or my property, or Buddha's property, or anyone's property. Can't own the Dhamma, can't own anything.
Now the just explained misknowledge is not a holding of persons or things that are a hypothesis or a theory or, by the distinct beliefs of Buddhists or non-Buddhist philosophers there's no unique permanent and independent person. We are just part of nature if you like, like water flows into water.
We just, because of causes, the results of wholesome and unwholesome bound to kamma, this five groups, which is our lives, are different. We are de-synchronized with each other. I'm happy, you’re unhappy, you're unhappy, I'm unhappy. Unhappiness come, whatever. So we are, we are, the reality is we are just like bobbing corks on a big ocean not going anywhere. The current sweeps this way we go that way. We’re like leaves blown around in the wind. Wherever the wind blows, we go.
That's our five groups. None of them permanent, none of them staying, but appearing and disappearing second by second out of nowhere - plop. Arising, arising, passing away cessation, like the breath. So we are just a series of anythings, five anythings. And the only reason we see them as a unity is out of misconception. There is nothing unified. The feelings run one way, the memory runs another and we’re just scattered.
Just like a tree comes into spring and it’s got all the leaves stuck on the tree, Autumn comes the leaves blow anywhere. Some probably blows into the shire offices, some blows into the street, some blows ... and there they die. So we’ve got a feeling, our mental objects arising and falling, totally impermanent. And that’ll, in other words, to be in samsara is, the whole of the efforts are, if you want to, they have no meaning inherently.
There's no inherent meaning in assembling these five groups and the only thing to do is to escape from the continuation of their reforming, which is called birth, and scattering, which is called death, and reforming which is called birth, and scattering called death. So just to dwell in the nirvana and develop that level after level. So that's that.
“When selflessness is understood”, says Chandrakirti, “the ‘permanent self’ is eliminated … ” It’s seen that those chaotic arising and fallings are, there is no permanent self, there never has been – past, present or future. Chandrakirti says, “When selflessness”, anatta, meaning anatta, “is understood the ‘permanent self’ is eliminated, but this is not acceptable” because you want the world to have meaning. You want your five groups to have purpose. But what won't accept it? It's the ‘I’ habit, the unreal, I've got to be a ‘me’.
Well there's no space in anywhere in the whole of samsara, in all the universes, there's no chink in reality where an unreal event can find a foothold. “Therefore to say ‘by knowing selflessness the self conviction is totally wiped out’, this is extremely amazing”. This is the amazing, amazing thing that seeing for yourself that that's the way it is.
In the commentary Chandrakirti adds, "in order to illustrate this point of mutual unconnectedness …” All those five groups they go their own way. There's nothing connecting them except they’re driven by past kamma. “To illustrate this mutual unconnectedness with an example, it is like when one sees a snake hole in the wall of one's house and one removes one's worry by saying, ‘There is no elephant [t]here!’ and if this were to remove the fear of the snake, alas, how ridiculous it would seem to others!” So therefore the people who see correctly don't say, because they know very well that whatever they say would be taken by the ego and then the ego would go to nihilism or eternalism, or say, "Oh, well why should I try to do good?" Well, why should you try to do good? Because the kammic packet hasn't finished yet. And each day, each day where the past runs into the future. You all have got future of good things to come, bad things to come, the result of past unwholesome, past wholesome, you go on.
Those five groups will go on, unless knowing this nibbana with intense power you disconnect. Then you pass away, but you don't pass away. You dwell in parinibbana then, true immortality, but never again do you assemble or make or touch or be in the samsara. So in Buddhist parlance you have gone to the furtherest shore. You've crossed the ocean of this wandering. The samsara is like an ocean where you just wander around aimlessly, crashing, falling around, sometimes happy, sometimes good, sometimes sunshine, sometimes tornado.
You leave the ocean of samsara behind, you go to the furtherest shore and you are the citta, pure. And you never, ever, ever come to birth in the samsara any more. And that's it. Now to make this vision stay, to make the knowledge stay, to be able to sit in the nirvana and see correctly, it is basically the power of your teacher, believe it or not, if you look. It's like your Teacher is showing you by telepathy, this picture. The Teacher's mind has overpowered your unreal ego and, because you allowed the Teacher to do it.
Now if you fight the Teacher to bring back your ego packet, and it'll come back when you come out of meditation for sure, that, when the true term of the meditation is the shower of the way so the, this five groups, which is still in existence but has some level of attainment because of long practice, this five groups which is not a Self, not a being, is imposing by telepathy, I'm sharing my vision of what I see with you, so that there can be no doubt that such a thing is attainable. This is not a conjuring trick. This is the way it is.
In other words, you might argue you're in a Buddha Dhamma Sangha field, true. Now the only reason that field exists is it just so happens that two and a half thousand years ago, the Buddha under the Bodhi tree did such powerful meditation and had such goodwill and such friendliness that this anatta being, this Teacher, was moved by the kindness of the Buddha and took Vows, Bodhisattva Vows, Tantric Vows under many Buddhas because from my view there are just these five groups wandering in samsara. But from your view, you suffer.
You see in the ultimate level your suffering was unreal because your
ego mind is unreal. But if you say to people who don't see, "You're
suffering is unreal" they just say, "You are being callous, my suffering
is real". But at the ultimate level there is no true suffering anywhere in
the samsara. But at the misinformation level for the beings who have not
seen the way, not seen the Buddha way, their
suffering to them is
real.
So from the view of the Buddhas, the Buddhas see like this, there are in existence five groups driven by ignorance, sustained by ignorance, maintained by ignorance. The five groups are empty, Sunyata, they have no inherent existence, there's no Self to be found, but the combination of those five groups by beings who are absolutely ignorant, who out of that raw material fabricate delusions, which they have been doing forever, for them, they experience suffering. Their suffering in ultimate absolute terms never happened, it was like a conjuror’s dream, like someone ...
So there is no past, no present, no future in the nirvana. It is timeless, it is stainless, it is pure and it will never come to an end. In other words, the higher level of the universe is just the citta, the citta is, it doesn't, not owned by anyone. So an "I" which is unreal can never be liberated. Now to continue the Buddha way you must make merit, merit, merit. You must keep five precepts at least because otherwise you'll make unwholesome kamma. So there, in the ultimate level nothing ever happened. There's no inherent reality. There’s just a set of unreal fabrications by combinations and permutations.
So in a way, you might say there has never been an existence of any sentient being past, present or future. That's absolute Dhamma. But at the relative level, there are combinations and permutations of delusions and they experience suffering. For them, because they love turning the unreal into their "real", they take an unpleasant feeling which doesn't know itself, is quite harmless, make an unreal picture of it and then say "I am unpleasant" or "I am this, I am that". It’s a load of [rubbish].
The goal is to finish, to become Arahant. The goal is to make enough merit over enough time using those useless five groups. Gear the lot of them towards meritorious acts, gear the lot of them to stopping harm, stopping killing, stopping hatred, stopping jealousy, stopping miserliness, stopping pride, stopping intoxicants and then you’ll be a blessing to the world of men and devas.
Even in this Dhamma-ending age, there are still some beings who are teachable. So as long as there's teachable beings, now what happens in two and a half thousand years, the citta opening onto this world, this human world, closes. And that's the end of Buddha Dhamma. So you just happen to be, happen to stumble, not by request, you just happen to stumble into a Buddha Dhamma in this life. But for countless lives you've all been [no good].
Now this life you must determine, “I am going to finish the Buddha way”. You are going to, what will you finish it with? The five groups yet to appear. For however long they appear, you gear those five groups into the good action. You stop tormenting the other beings, you stop fabricating that there is an I, a my, or a me. You stop whingeing, you stop everything, for the sake of the other beings.
You treat other beings as more precious than yourself. You help them attain, you know, if they're hungry you give them food, if they're got nowhere to live you give them a house. To do this you want to become rich, you want to work, work, work, get wealth, because it's hard to practice charity if you're poor. So you see that is the Buddha's Teaching.
Now this personal selflessness, when it appears, you see that phenomena is selfless, you start to see correctly. “When one understands selflessness, and abandons the intellectual self”, which is that unreal self, “this is not accepted as even the support of misknowledge. Thus, it is very strange to say that knowing selflessness will totally wipe out misknowledge”, but nevertheless it does.
“Some may object that there is a contradiction in the fact that Nagarjuna states, in the Jewel Rosary, that the phenomenal self habit, the truth habit about the aggregates is the root of the life-cycle”. Well, it’s true. “The intelligent see absolutely all the faults of the afflictions as coming from the egoistic views; because it is incorrect for there be two different roots of the samsaric life-cycle”. There is only one root of the samsaric life cycle and that is, the bottom root is misinformation or conventionally called ignorance.
Because of compassion you do Mahayana Illuminating Samadhi, you
develop compassion for others. Then you do vast Merit Accumulating Royal
Samadhi, then you do Virtue Maintaining Royal Samadhi and then you come
back to this All Powerful Samadhi. This meditation is All
Powerful
Samadhi.
It arises by the power of all the good meditators who have been around for two and a half thousand years like Tsong Khapa. They dedicated their merits that beings who were teachable would come to see for themselves. They did that using their five groups, using their mental constructs. The blessings shower over you. A shower of blessings come from the Sangha. So even though some of them have attained parinibbana there are these mental objects, not of infinite duration, but floating in the samsara ocean. And when you run into those mental objects you get a blessing.
The only reason, just like a magnet will pull iron to itself, someone with Refuge in Buddha Dhamma Sangha will pull the blessings automatically. And then you don't use the blessings for egoistic self-gratification. You use those blessings to keep you up and bouncy and energetic enough to teach others. So you get the blessings at a certain point, but you know.
And then when you make merit you go into new activities in the samsara, say in the twentieth century, this is 1988, you in turn do like this, you say, "May the merits made by me now or at some other time be shared among all beings here however many they be. May this gift of merits help all beings know the Path, realise the Path, follow the Path".
The mind of course is extremely fast. The Enlightened Mind is extremely swift, it's faster than words. So take rest. Well done, well done, well done.