The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives
Buddhist Hour
Broadcast
for Sunday 3 August 2003
This script is
entitled:
“Buddha Dhamma Bhavana”.
Bhavana can be translated as 'mental development' and
is what in English is generally but rather vaguely called
'meditation'.
The distinction made in modern times is that
the development of tranquillity (samatha-bhávaná),
leads to concentration (samádhi), and the development of
insight (vipassaná-bhávaná), leads to wisdom
(paññá).
These two important terms,
tranquillity and insight samatha-vipassana are explained in Suttas,
as well in the Abhidhamma texts.
Tranquillity (samatha) is
the concentrated, unshaken, peaceful, and therefore undefiled state
of mind, whilst insight (vipassaná) is the intuitive insight
into the impermanence, misery and impersonality (anicca, dukkha,
anattá) of all bodily and mental phenomena of existence,
included in the 5 groups of existence, namely, corporeality, feeling,
perception, mental formations and consciousness; (khanda).
Tranquillity, or concentration of mind, according to
Sankhepavannana (Commentary to Abhidhammattha-sangaha), bestows a
threefold blessing: favourable rebirth, present happy life, and
purity of mind which is the condition of insight. Concentration
(samádhi) is the indispensable foundation and precondition of
insight by purifying the mind from the 5 mental defilements or
hindrances (nívarana), whilst insight (vipassaná)
produces the 4 supra mundane stages of holiness and deliverance of
mind.
The Buddha therefore says: "May you develop mental
concentration… for who is mentally concentrated, sees things
according to reality"
In one sutta it is said: "Just
as when a lighted lamp is brought into a dark chamber, the lamp-light
will destroy the darkness and produce and spread the light, just so
will insight, once arisen, destroy the darkness of ignorance and
produce the light of knowledge."
The Vissuddhimagga
III-XI gives full directions how to attain full concentration and the
absorptions (jhána) by means of the following 40 meditation
subjects (kammatthána) prescribed by the Buddha.
10
kasina-exercises (kasina). These produce the 4 absorptions
10
loathsome subjects (asubha). These produce the 1st absorption.
10
recollections (anussati):
of the Buddha (buddhánussati),
the Doctrine (dhammánussati),
the Brotherhood of the
Noble Ones (sanghánussati),
morality,
liberality,
the
heavenly beings,
death (maranasati),
the body (kayagatasati)
in-and-out breathing (ánápána-sati)
peace
(upasamánussati).
Among these, the recollection (or
mindfulness) of in-and-out breathing may produce all the 4
absorptions, that of the body the 1st absorption, the rest only
neighbourhood-concentration (upacára-samádhi).
4
sublime abodes (brahma-vihára):
loving-kindness (mettá)
compassion (karuná)
altruistic joy (muditá)
equanimity (upekkhá).
Of these, the first 3
exercises may produce 3 absorptions, the last one the 4th absorption
only.
4 immaterial spheres (arúpáyatana):
of
unbounded space,
unbounded consciousness,
nothingness,
neither-perception-nor-non-perception.
These are based upon
the 4th absorption.
1 perception of the loathsomeness of food
(áháre patikkúla-saññá),
which may produce neighbourhood-concentration
1 analysis of the 4
elements (catudhátu-vavatthána, s. dhátu-vavatthána),
which may produce neighbourhood-concentration.
Mental
development forms one of the 3 kinds of meritorious action consisting
of giving (liberality; dána-maya-p.),
of morality
(síla-maya-p.) and
of mental development (meditation;
bhávaná-maya-p.).
Retreats allow a person to
practice Buddha Dhamma. One ongoing practice is the perfection of
morality (sila in the Pali language) at least one way to support weak
practice.
It is the first of the three kinds of training that
form the 3-fold division of the Eightfold Path leading to the
cessation of suffering. Concentration (samadhi) and Wisdom (panna)
are the other two. The keeping of precepts in up to fifty ways is
sila.
Generally, in lay life, it is recommended a minimum of
five precepts be kept. When on retreat however, the third precept is
strengthened so that there is no kind of intentional sexual
behaviour.
As well, three additional precepts are kept and
Noble Silence is observed. This gives much stronger protection
against unwholesome actions of body, speech and mind.
The
eight precepts observed in the Theravadin tradition while on retreat
are:
(1) I undertake to observe the Precept of refraining
from killing any living being.
(2) I undertake to observe the
Precept of refraining from taking what is not given.
(3) I
undertake to observe the Precept of refraining from any kind of
intentional sexual behaviour.
(4) I undertake the Precept of
refraining from false speech.
(5) I undertake the Precept of
refraining from taking intoxicants causing heedlessness. (6) I
undertake the Precept of refraining from eating after midday.
(7)
I undertake the Precept of refraining from entertainment,
beautification and adornment.
(8) I undertake the Precept of
refraining from sleeping on a high or luxurious bed.
The
eight precepts in the Pali language are:
(1) Panatipata
veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(2) Adinnadana veramani
sikkhapadam samadiyami
(3) Abramacariya veramani sikkhapadam
samadiyami
(4) Musavada veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(5)
Sura-meraya-majja-pamadatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(6)
Vikala-bhojana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(7)
Nacca-gita-vadita-visuka
dassana-mala-gandha-vilepana-dharana-mandana-vibhusanatthana-veramani
sikkhapadam samadiyami
(8) Uchasayana-mahasayana veramani
sikkhapadam samadiyami
When you are on bhavana retreat you
plan to leave all your usual responsibilities of daily life behind
for the duration of the Retreat.
Preferably, you do not
handle money or do business, and for the duration of the retreat you
keep your mobile phone off. Sati can be defined as memory,
recognition, consciousness, intentness of mind, wakefulness of mind,
mindfulness, alertness, lucidity of mind, self-possession,
conscience, self-consciousness, attentiveness, focused, not moving
away from.
Sati is the seventh link on the Noble Eightfold
Path leading to the extinction of suffering and is one of the seven
factors of Enlightenment. When you have the correct sati, you are
aware from second to second what forms are happening in the present.
There is no ‘slipping away from’ of things. Sati is
also a guardian. Because with Sati we can be mindful to guard the six
sense doors and so prevent defilements from entering the mind, Sati
is compared to a gatekeeper who stops thieves and robbers from
entering the city.
On retreat, householder duties we put
down. There is no call to prepare food, to look after children or
your spouse or to seek entertainments out of boredom.
The
attainment of supernormal powers is not the goal of Buddha Dhamma
practice, however, although they may be useful tools for some
practice, they become hindrances if played with too much.
The
correct practice is to use the penetrating power of the mind
accompanied by upacara-samadhi (concentration just before entering
Jhanas) or jhana-samadhi (the concentration in the Jhana state
itself) is utilised to observe the arising and the falling of nama
(mind and its concomitants) and rupa (ultimate matter) in the body.
The Buddha taught that: “Just as one calls ‘hut’
the circumscribed space which comes to be by means of wood and
rushes, reeds and clay, even so we call ‘body’ the
circumscribed space that comes to be by means of bones and sinews,
flesh and skin.”
In order to reach these states of
satisfactory practice and see into reality more as it is, five
hindrances must first be removed. They are almost certain to appear
when you practice bhavana. These are:
Kamacchanda : Sensory
Desire
Vyapada : Ill Will
Thina-middha : Sloth and Torpor
Uddhacca-kukkucca : Restlessness and Remorse
Vicikiccha :
Doubt
To be contented is to be happy simply to know what is
happening in that moment, just labelling it as pleasant, unpleasant
or neither unpleasant or pleasant; desirable, undesirable or neither
undesirable or desirable.
Sensory desire may be towards
persons or objects. Ill-will (Vyapada) may be ill-will towards others
(hatred or dosa in the Pali language), or ill-will towards oneself
(where it is experienced as guilt) or even ill-will towards your
meditation object or your meditation cushion!
Thina-middha is
that state of heaviness of body and dullness of mind that leads to
weak mindfulness and even to falling asleep during meditation. Sloth
and torpor is a way that the mind shows it is not content to be in
the moment and seeks to escape into dullness and sleep.
To
overcome sloth and torpor it is necessary to rouse energy by finding
joy in the bhavana. When you are enjoying something, you have no
difficulty staying awake and concentrating. Just think of reading a
good book, watching a favourite video or a child playing computer
games. Hours can pass quite easily with no thought of escape and
without drowsiness. He or she has no doubt about the worth of the
trivial experiences of play.
So it is with bhavana, if the
object of bhavana can be made interesting and the experience
enjoyable, the mind will be happy and content to stay with the object
of meditation for long periods of time with no difficulty. This is
the method of overcoming infinite boredom with the world.
The
fourth hindrance is Uddhacca-kukkucca and is the most troublesome for
most persons. It can be translated as restlessness and remorse, or
more simply, flurry and worry.
Here the key to overcoming
this hindrance is to practice loving kindness before you go into
retreat, so it can be used as a tool in retreat. If you have feelings
of worry, of remorse, of an uneasy conscience these can be overcome
by the practice of metta towards yourself.
Of course, the
best protection against feelings of remorse is not to have done
anything to be guilty about. This is why morality, or sila, is so
important in Buddha-Dhamma practice. But, it is important if you are
disturbed by kukkucca to be kinder to yourself. Accept that you are
not pure, that you have bad qualities. They can be recalled by
practice. Everyone has both good and bad qualities so see them both
as they are – as conditioned, as the product of kamma.
Remember the first hindrance is vicikiccha or skeptical
doubt. This refers to a very wide range of doubts that can be
experienced and has the nature of wavering. It will appear as
indecision. There can be doubt regarding the Buddha, the Dhamma or
the Sangha. Refer to our Abhidhamma Class 1 October 2002 notes, Class
No. 15 on our web site www.bddronline.net.au
In Buddha Dhamma
meditation practice, the outside world is put down and the inside
mental world is examined.
All Buddhist schools agree that
sooner or later meditation (Bhavana) must be done.
Our family
cannot do this for us, nor can they teach us the path out of
suffering.
We must become rational, practical minded, and
cool to plan the time away from our family for some time to practice.
We must plan ahead for a year or so to get even five days of
few duties for this purpose. This is why we serve, or help, or fund
others to make causes for their retreat. If we do not do this, we
will never come to our time to practice a retreat.
The
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines a retreat as, 'A period of
seclusion or retirement from one's ordinary occupations devoted to
religious exercise'.
Bhikkhu Piyananda says, that many people
are searching, they are searching, but they are not finding. Some do
not even know what they are searching for, on the other hand, some
know they are searching for some kind of inner peace and harmony.
They have found worries.
They have found so much confusion
and disturbances. They found more unsatisfactoriness. But they have
not found the peace and harmony within. Most people are adopting the
wrong methods to find peace and harmony: they are looking outside
themselves into the external world as the source of their troubles,
worries and problems.
They look to the solution of their
problems in their family, job, partner, friends, etc. They believe
that if they can only change the external conditions in their
environment, they can become peaceful and happy.
The external
conditions change, but they do not become peaceful and happy.
And
now so many people are turning their attention to the real source of
their happiness and their troubles: the mind. To turn persons
attention to the mind is to come to meditation (Bhavana).
Meditation is not intended to create relaxation only, but to
let us know how we can do these good things every day and how to use
under-the-surface knowledge that is self-deception as a stepping
stone to get beyond laziness at the same time.
Our Members
are taught to develop Right View of the Five Styles of our Centre: -
Friendliness, - Practicality, - Professionalism, - Cultural
Adaptability and - Scholarship. Buddha Dhamma teaches through correct
mind cultivation within the context of the Buddhist Eightfold Path,
that it is possible to arrive at a view of reality based on thorough
understanding of causes and effects.
To understand the use of
loving-kindness means to understand that its development makes it a
powerful "weapon" to protect the meditator under various
hazardous conditions that living may produce. On Buddha's advice,
Monks must not carry weapons. Instead they practice loving-kindness
(metta) for protection from wild animals and enemies in the forest.
By sending strong metta to the surrounding beings when
sitting in meditation in a forest location, Monks can prevent harm
from coming to them from potentially dangerous animals, such as
snakes, and thus continue their meditation safely. Most Monks having
long past forest experience still display loving kindness as a potent
mental force.
Metta is also an effective means to overcome
anger as it is the opposite of these violent and destructive mental
states, to build up the required concentration base for the
development of insight, because with metta, our mind concentrates
rapidly, and for a healthy relationship with every living being –
so important for a happy family, society and the world.
When
Metta is practiced correctly all four of the sublime abidings arise
and develop together like the four pillars of a meditation
hall.
Forest monasteries "still keep alive the ancient
traditions through following the Buddhist monastic code of discipline
(Vinaya) in all of its detail and developing meditation in secluded
forests".
One night, while the Buddha was sitting in
meditation under a Bodhi tree, the end of His religious quest was
finally achieved. He started to see, like in a mirror, His previous
lives, what He had been, the families He had had; He started to go
backward in time to see many previous lifetimes to arrive perhaps to
the point when it all started. Then He saw the life of other beings
similarly, like in a mirror and one thing became clear to him: the
plane of existence (out of the five planes of existence) where these
beings were reborn from one life to the next was determined by the
accumulated effects of the actions in previous lives, in other words
their own karma, a word which in Sanskrit means action.
As He
progressed through the night, He acquired a more detailed
understanding of the Law of Karma: He realised the Four Noble Truths
and the twelve links of the Law of Dependent Origination which is a
more detailed formulation of the working of the Law of Karma and the
truth of anatta, the truth that nowhere in the universe there is a
permanent self to be found.
Finally when the sun rose, He had
become an Enlightened one, He was no longer an individual in the
ordinary sense of the word. The point when all learning had stopped,
the final destination of His religious quest had finally been
achieved.
We can look at this experience as the manifestation
of the law of causality in the ethical domain but not as a type of
mechanistic causality as it could be inferred from a study of
scientific disciplines. This causality is expressed in its standard
formulation like this:
"When this is present, that comes
to be; from the arising of this, that arises.
When this is
absent, that does not come to be, on cessation of this, that
ceases."
This equates to a supply chain mechanism.
Immediately after the Buddha attained awakening at Bodhi
Gaya, he spent a lot of time paying respect to the Bodhi Tree under
which he sat. Without the shade of the tree, the harsh sunlight would
have broken his mind and awakening would not have been possible. For
this reason, the tree was an indispensable link in the supply chain.
The Members we treat as ‘professionals’ know cause
and effect as supply chain management, and, over time, develop a
realistic sense of becoming knowledgeable about the supply chain
costs of the goods and services we dispense to Monks, Nuns and
laypersons.
Professional Members at our Centre are taught to
make ‘many fields of merits’ more valuable and greater than
that field that would arise ‘if all the sands in the River
Ganges turned into jewels’.
A noble professional person
at our Temple "pays his or her way" by raising funds within
the law by using established supply chains.
This output of
supply chains or getting goods allows our organisation to continue to
develop and supply others by passing on goods and services freely to
benefit them, that is, the practice of dana.
It takes much
reading and learning time and effort for a ‘nonprofessional’
Member to arrive at the correct view (samma ditthi) of the
professional Member. Usually, this takes five to ten years of steady
effort.
The attainment of Samadhi in meditation is marked by
entry into states of mental absorption known as jhanas. Your ordinary
mind is in a mundane or worldly state, but when it is in a jhana
state it is filled with Bliss and is in an unworldly or supermundane
state as you have let go of all attachment to the world of the five
senses. The Jhana states are one tool of mental development. During
the Jhana state, mind is focussed ‘one-pointedly’ that is,
with focus and concentration, upon its object.
Jhanas are
also known as states of moral consciousness because the mind is so
absorbed in its object there is no room for unwholesomeness, hence no
boredom. For these reasons, you need to practice bhavana for yourself
to understand. Jhana practice has been taught at our Five-Day Bhavana
course for over 20 years. There is no charge but we reserve the right
to select who can attend and who cannot. A Five Day Bhavana Course
will be held from 5 September 2003 to 9 September 2003 from 9.00am to
5.00pm daily.
The theme is: Dana: How many ways?
Founder’s
Day is celebrated on 9 September 2003.
Founder’s Day
Puja, will be taught by Master Francisco So at the Chan Academy
Australia on 6 September 2003 from 9.30am to 11.30am and from 1.30pm
to 4.00pm.
As a tribute to our Founder and Teacher, John D.
Hughes we invite you to contribute to a publication to be published
on his 73rd Birth Anniversary entitled "Celebration of Buddha
Dhamma Work - John D. Hughes 1955 to 2003".
Please email
or post your contribution to us by 10 August 2003.
For more
information on our five day course please telephone 9754 3334.
May
you be well and happy.
This script was written and edited by
Pennie White, BA DipEd.
References
Chan Academy
Australia Radio Script Archives
http://www.bdcublessings.net.au/archive.html
NYANATILOKA’s
Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines
http://www.palikanon.com/english/wtb/dic_idx.html
Pali Text
Society’s Pali English
Dictionary
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/
Counts
Words: 3158
Characters: 16545
Paragraphs: 88
Sentences:
148
Averages
Sentences per paragraph: 2.6
Words per Sentence: 20.2
Characters per word: 4.9
Readability Statistics Passive Sentences:
18%
Flesch Reading Ease score: 44.5
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
score: 11.8
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