The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives
Buddhist
Hour
Script No. 370
Radio Broadcast live on Hillside 88.0
FM
for Sunday 27 February 2005CE
2547 Buddhist Era
‘Traits
and Abilities’
We continue now with the next part in our series of
transcribed Buddha Dhamma talks by John D. Hughes during a five-day
Bhavana course in June 1988 at the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
The talk is entitled ‘Traits and Abilities.’
The authors of today's script apologise for any errors or
misunderstandings that may have occurred in the process of
transcribing and editing the talks from the original audio tape
recording.
If you tuned into the Buddhist Hour last week,
Sunday 20 February, you may recall the talk ended in the following
way:
So just notice that when you start to alter your
behavior, or alter your, or build abilities, you can't rely on
Samsara not coming along to interrupt you, because Samsara came along
to interrupt you by bringing you here. The fact you're here was an
interruption of your pre-planned vice or stupidity or dumbness.
Samsara brought you here; Samsara can sweep you away from here.
But
my advice is, alter your abilities, get your ability to stay here,
because it's ... or get here regularly or something. Just meditate
through that, see where that puts you.
We now begin with the
talk entitled, “Traits and Abilities.’
All right,
so we've been talking about traits and abilities and I hope you can
distinguish between the two.
Very roughly, a trait is just
some old kammic disposition that you've practiced so regularly in the
past that it's your natural disposition. So some people are naturally
generous for example. That's a trait. Others are naturally stingy,
that's a trait. But it can be anything at all. In other words no one
trained them to be like that, it's just their kammic disposition. Now
of course if you've got generosity, if you've got stinginess, get to
some sort of generosity.
Other people have got the trait they
like to associate with ratbags or drunks or anti-social beings or
criminals. They naturally go and seek the gutter if you like. That's
a trait. And that's something that, because the Buddha says associate
with wise. So that is kammic, your kammic disposition.
You
often, you've all seen people, maybe, the extreme is, I know many
families with say brothers and sisters. Out of one family you might
get one boy or girl, and it might be just an ordinary middle class,
you know suburban family, or might be upper middle class, and one boy
or one girl will go, and there might be one in a hundred people in
that town who are duds or crooks, they'll go and seek them out and
befriend them.
On the other end of the spectrum, there might
be one in a hundred people who are very bright, very clean. The other
sibling will go and seek that person. And so their cultures very
quickly diverge and they end up in totally different worlds. Now that
is kammic. Remember, although they just happen to have some kammic
link to be born brother and sister to the same parents or something.
And that is just a natural arising of following whatever
came. There was no, there was no intellectualisation about it. There
was no sitting down for five years and say "I'll plan to go and
mix with ratbags" or "I'll plan to go and mix with
musicians or artists or whatever". It was just the kammic traits
manifesting. But then other people will say "I'll go and study
this".
Now very roughly speaking there's certain subjects
I studied, for example geometry, the minute I saw it I was, the
teacher would write the first two lines, I'd never seen it before
this life and I'd, I could fill in right down to QED. So I was top in
the class for geometry, I didn't have to study it was just like, I
knew every single proof every single line of Euclid and the reason is
I'd studied it before.
There were certain things in art and
architecture that I just, I knew more than the teacher just by
looking, you know. There were some areas of music that I just, you
know, accelerated in. Mathematics, some areas of mathematics I'd eat.
Other areas that had been invented since I'd studied mathematics I
found as difficult as anyone else, but other parts I just flew
into.
Reading was natural. I could read from a very early age,
I'd devour books. I had the good kamma that the schools were shut
because of polio so instead of wasting my time at school for a few
years I'd just read and read and read. Books and books and books and
then, because of my good kamma people would give me books. So I had a
library, by the time I was about five I had my own personal library I
suppose about maybe 600 books. Something like that. So that is
kammic; that's all it is.
Who's in there?
So these a…
If you just stop there and just repeat what you've got, well you'll
just reinforce, you ... it's like saying all you are doing is
repeating your past life. You... A series of human lives. And the
result is that you never get any new ability. Unless you add new
things to your kit of parts, then you're not getting anywhere.
So
we get this idea of progress. It's not a Buddhist idea. The idea
isn't progress in the normal sense of the word. The Buddhist idea is
this: identify what's wholesome, what makes good kamma and increase
it. Identify what's unwholesome, what makes bad kamma and decrease
it. That's the preliminary steps of Buddhist persistence and
constraint. You persist in developing wholesome minds, you constrain
the arising of unwholesome minds; like satipattana.
Now
because the, of all the things in the world, there's never been more
things in the world than there is today. Like there's new sciences
developing by the dozen. Just think of a few of them and you'll
realise. The technology of putting men on the moon. The Russians are
going to put men on Mars. Material science, I'm not going to go
through it, but there's developed you know all sorts of new materials
developed, new paints developed, new, new everything developed.
So
there’s never been some many individual items. Frank will tell
you that, he's in liquidation stock. Like you can see machine,
machine, machine, he never, you know, it seems no end to them. So to
give you some idea there's probably about at least 10 million new
inventions added to the world each year. Brand new things no one's
ever had before.
Now the goal is not to go and collect 10
million new toys if you like. The goal is to isolate one or two
characteristics that you have to some degree and focus your mind on
to them clearly, understand how they arose from past, what were the
conditions that made them, what are the factors that deteriorate them
and what are the factors that make them stay.
Now, as you
know, the basis of Buddhism is to find refuge in something. And
you've heard the arguments a million times by now, that if you take
refuge in money blah, blah, blah, if you take refuge in house, if you
take refuge in your body, your clothes, if you take refuge in
anything then the analysis shows that you're foolish. And then
ultimately you get some idea that the only thing to take refuge is in
the Triple Gem, Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha or maybe four, Guru as well.
Well we'll stay with the basics. Buddha became enlightened by
himself. He taught the Dhamma. Now the Dhamma is not a Buddha
invention, it's not like inventing a new carburetor. The Buddha
discovered the Dhamma and it happens it's the same Dhamma that every
Buddha discovers. The Dhamma is very difficult to discover. The
highest refuge is the Dhamma, below that the Buddha and below that
the Sangha. That's the Buddha's own statement. And that's why the
Buddha wouldn't appoint a successor to himself like a Pope or
anything like that. He just wouldn't. He was asked and he said "No".
And he said the self's got to be the guardian of the self.
So
the Buddha did two things, he said "when I pass away, the
Dhamma, (his teachings) is to be the refuge" and he did one
other thing while he was alive what happened was one of...you've got
to realise he the richest men in India, everyone gave him vast
properties, villages, he had more real estate than any living man in
India's got today. Because people gave these vast estates, these
..some people gave him villages you know, like they had slaves there,
the whole packet, the slaves, the building, the land, everything.
Just given to Buddha, personally, and he used that for his Monks.
So
he was very, very, very rich in, we call it real estate today and
some of the real estate had a lot of buildings on it. Now if you
study very carefully you'll see how the Buddha transmitted that for
the use of the Sangha and made a lot of Vinaya rules about, no
particular Monk owns it and if there's so many Monks one's appointed
as a quarter master and so that the greedy Monks don't take more than
there share and so on and so on.
Now where is the refuge and
how do you get it and how do you maintain it and how do you increase
it? Because remember, when the refuge is complete you are fully
enlightened, In other words, you might say that the only beings who
have got completed, perfect refuge are the Arahant fruit. They have
become living Dhamma, although they're human beings, their mind is
Dhamma. That is the content of their mind, they have no, Arahants
have no training to do, they have completed their training. An
Arahant has nothing further to do, except suicide.
Now
basically the way the suicide comes, he creates the conditions for
not being born again. Whereas all other people because of their
ignorance don't suicide, they take rebirth. So an Arahant is if you
like, has completed everything, has done everything that's to be
done, completed, has no more training and automatically out of the
vast knowledge of the Arahant the only final thing the Arahant does
is not create another rebirth anywhere, not in heaven, not in hell,
not anywhere, nowhere.
Now if you say you stop your life, like
using conventional words, we say that's suicide, that you stop your
life. So the Arahant, if you like to use the word suicide, at death
every Arahant suicides but not by destructing his body, not by
destructing his mind, merely by not creating the causes for further
attachment to Samsara. And since there is no cause for birth, there
can be no birth. And each Arahant goes to Parinibbana by the same
method and it's described in the texts which jhanas they do, they go
up, they come down, they go up, they come down and then they vanish.
And they vanish and that's parinibbana.
There is no, some of
them leave relics of course, like the Buddha leaves relics, they
might cremate the body or find a few relics. Some of them, depending
on their practice, their body vanishes, they don't leave a dead body.
Others leave a body that doesn't decay. They had some of these in
Tibet, these bodies 7, 8, 900 years old, are not decayed, they don't
putrefy. What they generally do, they usually die in the lotus
position, pass away in the lotus position. So what they generally do
they, sometimes they put the body on the altar or sometimes they put
gold leaf over it. And one of the things the Chinese did in Tibet,
they took some of these Ancient bodies that didn't decay and they
burnt them. And made the Tibetans watch. The Tibetans were aghast of
course.
So all sorts of psycho phenomenon occur. Geshe Loden
has got one image that he got from Tibet it's about four hundred
years ago. It is an image of Tsong Kapa. Several years ago he said to
me "Touch that image" and I felt it and round the face it's
warm and I looked carefully, I put my glasses on, and it's growing
like, like fine skin.
So although it's a bronze image, it is
like living skin on the face and it's warm, it's like, just like
feeling nice warm skin. It's some psycho relic working and that image
he brought from Tibet he's still got it, beautiful, I always pay
respect to it when I see it.
So there are relics and
basically, basically the, it's quite a wise practice to bow down to
relics. It's quite a common custom, it has a meritorious thing,
without ritual it's very hard to do, touch, see often. But we touch
it so you offer it otherwise you don't get any merit.
So we
now look at this Buddha or Buddho, Dhammo, Sangho. It should be in
order of hierarchy Dhammo, Buddho, Sangho. And that's the Three
Refuges. Now how do you know when you've got refuge? What are the
marks of someone whose got refuge and someone who hasn't, how would
you know? What would the difference be? Look in your mind, see if
you've got refuge.
You've heard Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, which
in most ages you can't hear. Like if come to birth for billions of
world cycles, never even heard the word Buddho, or Dhammo or Sangho.
But it just happens you're born in a Buddha Sasana. Dhammo, Buddho,
Sangho. Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma it's the Buddha.
So how are you
going to do it? These are the only refuges worth having. How do you
get refuge? Don't worry about the mechanics, just how do you know if
you've got refuge or not?
Well try again.
The simplest
way, I wouldn't do it of course, but the simplest way of knowing if
you've got refuge is I'd pull out a gun and shoot you. And if you
were born in a Buddha field you had refuge. If you weren't born in a
Buddha field you didn't have refuge. But I'm not gonna test you out,
I don't kill, but that is how you would know if you had refuge.
You
would be born instantly into a Buddha era or Buddha teaching heaven
and there is only three places basically you can learn. One is human
in a Buddha cycle or era. Two is you're born in Sukhavati, Buddha
heaven, there's many Buddha heavens, like Sukhavati. And the third
one is you are born, Sukhavati your got body, rupa, and the third is
you could be born in arupa heaven in which dwells the being who will
be the next Buddha, Maitreya. 60,000 million years from now, that
Maitreya being, who's a Bodhisattva, will die in that arupa heaven,
take human rebirth and that is next Buddha.
Beings who are
born in that heaven pull out and take birth with him. They become his
monks and nuns. So that's the source of the next Buddha Sangha, the
one after this one. So how, if you haven't got Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha
refuge and you die, you will not hear Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha
teaching. So how do you do it? How do you get refuge? What's the
trick? Well maybe there's no trick. Maybe it's just practice. By
having Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha refuge in my former lives, in this
life, without a teacher, I could remember Buddha. Because I
established, very firmly,
the Triple Gem Refuge. So I could
remember all about the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha and I knew all about
Buddhism and I could find out with no teacher.
Having got
remembrance, I could then send my mind to Tibet, I could find
Teacher's, I could look at, find out how many Teacher's there are in
the world and so on. I could examine thoroughly all the worlds to see
what the situation was. The Dhamma Eye, Omni essence, Omni essence,
Omni essence.
So it's very important to get refuge correctly.
How many ways do you think there are of getting refuge? Well the
answer there's probably an infinite number of ways because there is
an infinite number of beings all of different. So, now if you take a
Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha refuge and we go into conventional,
conditional words, we will call and we will dig around to find some
other words out of you, we will call Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha refuge, I
found a word here earlier when I was looking for a word, we will call
that loyalty to Dhamma practice, as a conventional, conditional
Dhamma. Look if you have Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, you have loyalty to
Dhamma practice. You won't practice, you know, heretic religions, you
won't go on a smorgasbord, and you’ll just practice Buddha
Dhamma.
Has anyone got a better word than loyalty?
Switch
that tape off Frank, we'll dig around here.
These figures are
your estimates of the trait where you felt a kindly disposition to
the words Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha or the idea Buddha. And the other
figure which in all cases, except Michael, is higher through ability.
One of the characteristics of these figures, except Joy at 60/40, but
the bulk is that somewhere in the range .. you know say ...you know
as a sort of average say 70 to 90 percent you have built refuge by
creating a new ability.
Now that, it's like saying as a
function of time your traits fade off. Normally they will just stop
at your death won't they ... to a great extent. But the abilities,
the oomph you put into creation of value through your ability through
working to make it, to create a new ability in you, that will carry
over into your next life.
May you know your wholesome traits
and persist in strengthening them.
May you know your
unwholesome traits and be diligent in restraining them.
May
you be well and happy.
May all beings be well and happy.
This script was transcribed, prepared and edited by Julian
Bamford, Frank Carter, Leanne Eames, Celestina Guliano, Evelin Halls,
Anita Hughes, Alec Sloman, Lainie Smallwood, Julie O'Donnell and
Amber Svensson.
References:
Recording Title: Traits
and Abilities
Tape 8, Side 1
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of
recording: 28/6/88
Transcribed by: Frank Carter, Lainie
Smallwood
Checked by : Lainie Smallwood, Frank Carter
CD
Reference 28_06_88T8S1A
File Name:
28_06_88T8S1A_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
28
June 1988, 3.26pm
Words: 3,350
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