Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
Persistence and Restraint
John D. Hughes
Recorded
Teachings
Buddhist Discussion Centre
(Upwey) Ltd.
33 Brooking St
Upwey, Victoria
Australia
3158
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488
Phone: (03) 9754
3334
Fax: (03) 9754 3334
email: wbu@bdcu.org.au
Disclaimer
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 27/6/88
Transcribed by Frank Carter & Alec Sloman,
Checked by Lainie Smallwood & Leanne Eames
CD Reference
27_06_88T7S1i
File Name: 27_06_88T7S1i_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
Recording Title: "Persistence and Restraint "
John D. Hughes: Start
with the Yamantaka thing about, you know da, da, da, my goals will never
be
achieved. Put the Yamantaka, any Yamantaka thing on it. So this is going
to be awesome.
Frank (student): The, actually the Yamantaka lines that we've, we’ve used here before are exactly correct for this meditation course, because the foe that Yamantaka talks about is the very same concept that is in our minds and causing all our troubles. And the, the Yamantaka is only interested in, he is not interested in anything that will benefit the ego. He is not interested in anything that will strengthen, strengthen that concept.
And the extent or the clarity or the firmness of Yamantaka's statement is an exact measure of how to treat this unreal "I". And the statement is:
"Trample him, trample him, Dance on the head of this treacherous concept of selfish concern! Tear out the heart of the self-centered butcher who slaughters our chance to gain final release!"
And it's a concept that he’s talking about, it's not a real, it's not a true . .
John D. Hughes: It would be better to say "the unreal concept that stops us from gaining final release"
Frank Carter: So the way that I use goals, and I sincerely try to apply this same idea or approach or attitude to all the Dhamma, is I try to take a view of trampling any obstacles. I really try to trample, I don't leave doors open for the things to fall over.
So the methods that we’re taught by the precious Guru are so difficult to find, and they are jewels because they work, they succeed, they are perfect. So, it's so difficult to find something like that. I would, in my heart, I would wish to never to throw away even one. So I still have the goals on the dashboard of my car.
It's like ruthlessly trying to use the methods and the practice irrespective of how difficult or how, there are many obstacles, but the reason that I would have those goals still there, and use them every day, and it's not just the goals, it's the planning techniques that Spike taught us. I can honestly say of all of the major and minor goals that I have put to paper since that meditation course, I have not discarded one and there would have been six major and in the planning stages, well over a hundred activities that I've listed and not discarded.
So I've kept at each individual one till it's finished. And some of them I may have had on my list for six months but I wouldn't discard it because it was too difficult or, I am quite fair dinkum about using the techniques that we've been given.
John D. Hughes: My pet name for Frank, and it's the highest praise I can ever pay out to another sentient being is I call him Fearless. Now Frank is absolutely fearless in the sense he will conquer fear. Fear of anything. You are successful when I start to call you Fearless. None of you I can call Fearless, except Frank. Frank is absolutely fearless. So the highest quality you can develop here, now, is to become fearless, be without fear and Frank will explain to you what he has in his mind that is stronger than being afraid and dropping aside. Now explain, thank you Mr. Fearless, my friend.
Frank: I often do have fear arise, but even though it is difficult to handle, it is not anything that I would deliberately give up because of. I won't choose to give up because of it. I might be conquered by it, but I won't give up. It's like, it's like a battle where the front troops can be defeated, but the, sitting behind there somewhere is this “I won't give up.”
So it's not like um, it’s not like an idea that can change much. I really can generate that without flaw. I think everybody's got their own strengths in practice so I’m not saying that there's nothing else that will do but, there's a lot of you that try extremely hard but it's like there's a, I use the word “ruthlessness”. There's just, there's got to be a real steel. ”I will not move from this point. I make my goals, I will not take one step back, even if I fail with the goals I will not give up. I will not go backwards even if I fail many times”.
I mean, we come and sit in meditations, for me six years and probably the first three years it was just a continuous battle, and all the meditation was, was accepting failure if you like, not being able to do it. But not giving up at the same time. And actually this meditation is the same, the one we’re doing. It's to, to draw a line and say I'll sit on this until I see and you've got no evidence that you'll succeed. But you sit anyway, and if you’re depending on evidence then you haven't drawn the line, it's conditional, you just stick, stick at it. It's possible. It's like the moment the mind really becomes firm and sits and won't retreat, then it might get more dukkha and more dukkha and more dukkha but there's this firmness, it just looks you know to see. And that is capable of success, that method.
Like with Melva, there's many times I’ve seen her practicing and one night she said, “That's it. I am just gonna stick”. And normally she would go home. This was some time ago, at ten o'clock, 11 o'clock and this night whatever her discomfort was, however difficult, all of the excuses she produced this “I am not moving until I get it”. And she got it. So that particular night she was successful.
So the ego minds will fight but you just endure. And if you can develop that you can achieve your goals, if you apply the same method to your goals. If you had’ve applied it completely when they were taught, many of the things that you’ve still not even formulated as goals would have been achieved by now. There's a lot of wasted time by not taking the teachings to heart.
And many other teachings that are given to us we've wasted by not, not treasuring them and using them fully. There's no need to collect all the techniques like hoarding them. They're not, they're useless like that. Goal setting's useless. Planning is of no value at all, time management, all these things we've been taught, unless they are put with absolute sincerity into action. Is that right Michael?
Michael (student): Yes.
Frank: Why?
Michael: Well, that's a necessary aspect of achieving them. If that's not included . . .
Frank: Minnie?
Minnie (student): Yeah?
Frank: Is it correct what I said, and why?
Minnie: I see that there's no point in even making goals if you're not going to act on them.
Frank: Right. So then, why don't you act on the instructions? If you can understand what I'm saying, why don’t you do it like that? So much easier.
Frank: Thank you Spike.
John D. Hughes: Good. It’s my pleasure, Fearless. Thank you.
John D. Hughes continued:
There are two things that are absolutely vital in the practice of the Middle Way. To be persistent, to persist, and to exercise restraint.
Now, why they are two separate things is, persistent means, to be consistent means, start something and don't stop. So the mind that has persistence is one mind, it won't stop. You set it to work and it keeps going and going and going. If it says, do this, do this, do this it'll keep going. That's persistence. Do this, do this, do this.
Persist means, “Keep at it”. Constraint means, “Stop”. So persistence is an all systems go mind and constraint is an all systems stop mind.
They are two different minds. Now, if you have persistence, if you had a machine and you could only turn it on and you couldn't turn it off, it would drive you nuts. If you had a machine and you couldn't turn it on, it would drive you nuts. So the ability to switch on and off, you need two minds.
If your persistence mind is very small you will start something and then you'll exercise constraint and you'll switch it off. So you've already got persistent minds and constraint minds. The point is, some of you have got powerful persistent minds and some of you have got powerful constraint minds, but you must develop both minds. It's not a matter of, you've got to know when to start and when to stop. Two different minds.
It's not like a light switch which you can switch on and off and you're on the same circuit, it's not like that, they're two different types of understanding. For example, you might say, "I will persist with, I'm going to change this attitude of mine and I will persist". The change might have come and you forgot the target was, when I've changed the attitude switch off, I've got it perfect.
So that's the first thing you've got to understand. The Dhamma's like that. The Buddha is, has got, if you like, the perfection of persistence and the perfection of constraint. So, an example of the constraint of the Buddha is this; the Buddha, if he's asked something, say he is asked a question, he persists to get the full understanding of the question, which he might do verbally or mentally. Then he examines carefully the options, and with perfect wisdom constrains his choices, and then he constrains his reply, replies and then stops.
Two different qualities.
By seeing them as two different qualities, none of them are ego qualities. Dissociate persistence from the ego, otherwise that's ritual.
Dissociate constraint from the ego otherwise it's sloth and torpor. Two different minds.
So that's the first thing. If you're setting up a target, you must persist and you must constrain at the right time. You mustn't let the ego mind be the constraint on the system.
Now in fact, having said that I want to point
out to you that the ego mind, if it's let loose will constrain your
persistence, and similarly, if you're constraining something, you're
refraining from it. You're constraining yourself on an action, say
a
precept, and then you get the green light from the ego, then the
constraint is gone.
So, the ego destroys constraint and the ability to persist. Now that's the first thing you must know, if you're planning something, how long you should persist for and when you should stop. So if you get a great idea you wouldn't work on it three days, day and night nonstop, because the result is you'd probably fall into bed exhausted and sleep for a week, and the net result is after a week’s sleep you've probably forgotten what the idea was you were working on anyway.
Remember it's the Middle Way. Now that's the first way. The second thing is having developed those two . . . you have a trait, an innate characteristic resulting from repeated past kamma, [and] one of you're traits is you like to hear Dhamma. That's the only explanation for the fact you’re here. It's just a trait you've got.
You have no idea, some of you, that the Dhamma will bring you to Arahant fruit. I know you've heard it at a word level but you don't know that you will. So you've got to modify traits that you've got. So if you had a knowledge of modifiability and you've got, of a trait, and you've got a time limit on, then you make choices about which one to modify within the economy of the time. Remember there's a time limit on everything.
Now, an example is given in here of how you go about training people within a time scale. Everything’s got to have a time frame. And this is the example, but you can, we'll talk about it and elaborate it a bit in a minute.
Suppose, for example, that ‘aggressiveness’, which is another name for persistence, was discovered to be one of the primary traits important for success in selling. If it is found that this is a readily modifiable trait, that is, one that can be easily developed by means of appropriate methods, it may not be particularly important to evaluate the trait of aggressiveness when selecting men for selling jobs. On the other hand it may be found that verbal fluency is also important for success in selling, but investigation may show that this is a trait which is little, if at all, subject to modification by training in latter years.
Projects should be formulated for throwing all possible light on the relative modifiability of human traits and abilities. It should be noted that the observed consistency or apparent non-modifiability of a trait does not prove actual non-modifiability. Lack of knowledge concerning effective training methods or static environmental conditions may result in apparent non-modifiability of traits at a given time in a specific culture.
However for purposes of prediction, this distinction is unimportant until such time as discovery of better training methods or social change result in the possibility of modification of a particular trait.
What that means is there are, you are in a culture. It's an Australian culture, which means it's a multicultural culture. You are in a post-industrial society, you’re not in a peasant agrarian society, and you have got an enormous amount of cultural artefact's behind you, some of which are of benefit to you and some of which are a great hindrance to you.
Some of your culture, some of the culture you have acquired is a great hindrance to you and until you can discriminate, until you can classify what your culture is and you know what parts of your culture are a hindrance and what parts of your culture are of benefit to you you don't know which part to discard. And it may be that under the present conditions in 1988 the environment is not suitable for you to discard certain of your bad cultural habits.
So, for example, this culture here in this room is very suitable for modification of certain things, but it’s totally unsuitable for modification of other things. The reason for that is, for example, we endeavour to keep a fairly constant temperature here, so it's not too hot and it's not too cold. We endeavour to keep, you know, the air fresh. I open and shut the windows. We endeavour to keep you well fed, you know, well drink supplied. We endeavour to see, if you're too tired I tell you to go and rest, if you're too irritable I will take you for a walk in the garden.
But in certain situations whether you're hungry or thirsty or tired or whatever, you get sometimes in an event where you must perform or fail. And it's not always possible to modify the environment if you want to go into certain areas. So you've got to persist, have that word in your, you've got to have a mind that you can switch on persist. You've got to have a mind that’ll exercise restraint, “Stop”,and those minds have to be appropriate to the factors of what you are trying to do.
So because of the length of sitting, the quality of persistence is necessary. Because of the need to be in certain jhanas, the need is to constrain the mind inside the body. So Adrian* for example can keep his mind inside his body for reasonable amounts of time now, whereas for the first week or couple of weeks or whatever it was, I lost track of the time, his mind was out all over the place.
So you've got to, you've got to, when you write a plan of what you want to do, you've got to know what traits and abilities are needed for that plan. If you haven't got the traits and abilities needed, then it's no good saying, “I'll do that plan tomorrow” because your learning curve time might be a month or whatever long it takes. So it's no good saying, “I'll go outside the door now and get a suntan” because the environment is it's night. There's no sun. So until you see that, that your environment has a ... the biggest effect on people, believe it or not, is the weather. Because if you went outside and it was snowing, you can't operate. If you go outside and it's too hot, you can't operate. You forget about simple things like that.
Also in meditation if the light is too bright it breaks your mind. You never meditate in very powerful direct sunlight because the light actually breaks your mind. It's some phenomena. Now therefore you've got to become realistic, and you can't become realistic until you've got the traits and abilities that know what the word “realistic” means. “Realistic” means you can do what you want to do. That’s realism.
So although some of you couldn't read French ... you can, can't you? You can. Some of these can't read French. You two can, I can. But it's not unrealistic to say, “I'll learn to be able to read French”. But it is unrealistic to say, “I will learn to read French by tomorrow morning”. Now just because you can't do something now it doesn't mean ... Leanne speaks Japanese .., it's [un]realistic to say by tomorrow morning I'll be as fluent in Japanese as Leanne.
So you see, when you set your goals you can set anything you like and it is attainable. In other words, it's no good saying "Oh well, I won't go to France I can't speak French, I won't go to Japan … " Well one, you could take Mark* with you, or Leanne with you, or you could hire an interpreter. Or you could learn French or Japanese. Now if you miss out on one skill or trait or ability, you’ll be, your project or your goal will not be achievable.
For example, if you thought, “I'll go to Japan”, and you get a name, “and I'll ask him to give me $20,000 to build a meditation hall”, and when you get there, there’s no interpreter and he doesn't speak English and you've got one day before your visa expires, that's it. You should have planned, you should have seen that, foreseen that event. Now that's a very, very simple example.
In your planning, if you plan correctly, you can't fail. It's impossible to fail. The only thing that will stop you is if you drop dead. So correct planning, planning isn't difficult as long as you've got persistence and start to examine the possibilities. So that's the first
factor and knowing how long it takes to modify. If you want to modify your speech it might take a year, say you learn to speak French or Japanese for example, or even if you could learn to speak English, that might take some of you years. “Ay? It’s too hard”.
I think you might take some years to be fluent in English because you’re under the delusion that you are already.
Now, the next one is you get to the development of rational ideas. The criteria that you operate on planning is you must be rational. Now if you, your ego doesn't like that, your ego, remember, is totally absolutely unreal and irrational. Don't involve your ego in planning because it's irrational. You know, you say to your ego, "What's two and two?" and your ego says, "How much would you like it to be?" Your ego is irrational, it's got no intelligence. So you've got to be rational. You need rationality.
So the point is that attempts, attempts to, there's been major attempts in psychology to rationally formulate psychological systems. Now apart from one work which is used internationally by psychologists, it's like a check list. They give you cards with certain key questions and then it's like an interactive tree network and depending on the question they select the next question. They run through a program and the end of that is they’ve diagnosed what your psychological traits are.
But the problem with that is to get the answer, the correct answer from the person. So there's been many, many efforts to make rational equations, if you like, in psychology and the basic thing is, although a lot of work’s been done on it on computers, the success rate is not
perfect. So in some areas when you come to make some assumptions about yourself, even with the best intention to be rational you'll have to accept that what you're putting down is at the best an educated guess.
So what you've got to do is develop a method, a rational method, of interviewing yourself when you're planning. So you see it's alright to write a marvelous plan that would work for some theoretical person, but then when you've written that great plan, call for applicants, and you've only got one applicant - yourself. And say now on this plan you get up at four o’clock every morning, "How do you feel about that Mr.
Hughes?' and I say "I wouldn't have that in a fit" and I walk away. Well of course I don't write plans which involves me getting up at four
in the morning. I have to write plans that involve me going to bed at four o’clock in the morning. I'm quite comfortable with those aren't I Jo? But Melva, if Melva tried to work my hours, she'd ... you wouldn't write your plans like I write my plans. See Melva gets up at sparrow fart by inclination. What time do you love to get up at?
Melva (student): Seven.
John D. Hughes: Well, that's the times when the sparrows wake up, twitter, and then fart. That's sparrow fart Leila. Well if she gets up to hear the sparrow farts, if there's one thing I can't stand, if there's one, there are people, they're not insane, there are people in the world like Melva who love to get up early in the morning but they burn out at night. Who likes to get up at six o’clock in the morning? You do?
Minnie: At Melva’s house I do.
John D. Hughes: All right. June, do you like to get up early in the morning? You're sane. Join me. You're one of my mob.
Look I reckon the world, at midnight the good world starts because all the people who get up at six in the morning have gone to bed. At one o’clock the world’s getting better and better because the people who got up at seven o’clock in the morning have gone to bed. By two o’clock the world’s perfect, and do you want to hear a figure June? Five percent of Victorians get up after nine o’clock and I have days when I'm in
that top five percent. To me, they're the top five percent. To the sparrow farters they're the bottom five percent. It depends on your perception.
Alright, so you've got to be realistic. If you write a plan and it's detailed enough you'll obviously put what times you're going to do it on. You've got to put on what times, because a planner means I'll be there at, you know twenty past ten or, a weekly planner which you should all do every week for the rest of your life. You should plan your work, you should plan your study, you should plan your sleep and you should plan your pleasure. You must have high grade pleasure. If you don't have high grade pleasure you'll go into a dried prune and one of the things that most of you don't know, you don't know how to have high grade pleasure.
Michael Young and June Young show symptoms occasionally of getting into high grade pleasure. And apart from me I think that's it. Tell me your version of high grade pleasure and I'm not going to have it's getting up at six o’clock in the morning. That's work.