Ayya Anandabodhi: Aligning One's Life with Virtue

So we talk about the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, the three jewels and the three refuges, the Buddha being the one who awakened back in India, 2,600 years ago, and also the quality of awakenness that is natural to all of us but often obscured. And the Dhamma, the teachings that the Buddha gave, which we have amazingly good access to in many languages now, and also the truth of the way things are. So that's not a doctrine but more of an attunement and noticing. And then the Sangha being those in the past and the present who have awakened on the path to different levels and also that within us which has the ability to awaken or is willing to put in the work you could say to awaken, whether it's fully awakened or a little bit more than we are or whatever it is, but to align our lives with the path rather than with just following desires and just trying to get away from aversion and getting confused by the madness of the world, you know. That's kind of what we do as a person and then the path is inviting us to find this wisdom and clarity that is natural and inherent to everyone, to each of us, and to find that and to use that as a compass in our lives. And so there's also a practice that we do is like a formal recollection where we recollect the qualities of the Buddha, qualities of the Dharma and qualities of the Sangha. So it says like a practice. Then in bringing those things to mind that kind of brightens them, sharpens them up and sort of brings them into our system you could say, just as if you watch lots of garbage, you know, that goes into your system and then that influences how you think, how you feel, the things you do. So we try and make effort to kind of really reduce the garbage and put some good stuff in there. And anyway, one of the qualities of the Dharma, so there's a list of qualities, beautiful qualities, one of the qualities is that the Dharma is beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle and beautiful in the end. It's an interesting, and it doesn't sort of elaborate that much, but it's like, oh, the Dharma beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle and beautiful in the end. Kalayana is the word, beautiful, lovely, it's another translation, lovely in the beginning, lovely in the middle, lovely in the end. So there's nothing in the Dharma that is not beautiful, not lovely, even though sometimes the practice doesn't feel so lovely, can feel quite hard at times. But one way of relating to those three beauties of the Dharma is in the beginning, so the beauty in the beginning, so when we first come across the path and we begin to practice, so often for Westerners it starts with meditation, and we start meditating and then we see what's going on in our mind a bit more. If we're meditating with a lot of control, we might not see that, we're trying to control everything, control the mind to only be with the breath and control it not to be aware of anything else. So we might not actually see that, we might not be able to see clearly what's going on here in our mind, but for many people when we first start to meditate, you know, probably looking for peace and tranquility and all the lovely things, you know, we learn about some doing meditation and then we sit and it's can be quite hard, you know, mind's distracted and body feels uncomfortable and and start wondering what was the point, don't understand it, do you know what I supposed to be doing and so all of that can be going on. Or we might, so that could be like doubts, self-doubt or doubt about what we're supposed to be doing. Or it may be that we stop and we still our mind and we find that there's a really strong critic that's just hammering away, hammering away and away and away and a whole meditation and then some people might think, oh meditation's bad, shouldn't meditate because these bad things happen but actually just seeing what's happening all the time, the rest of the time we would distract ourselves from it. Or it might be that we want to just spend the whole time fantasizing about lovely things, beautiful things, inspiring, you know, about like delightful, pleasant things and there's a sort of greed and delusion in that and what the practice is really inviting us to do is to be present, is to know what's happening here and now and to understand, you know, is this beneficial or not, is this helpful or not, is this wholesome or unwholesome? And at first we might not be able to tell and we might not have very clear framework for which to tell. We might have, you know, some a view that believes that things that are unhelpful are actually helpful, things that are helpful are actually unhelpful. It can be like that and that's why it's good to have other people, you know, talk with other people, other members, other Sangha members and also to look at the early teachings is the Buddha's pretty clear about where things fall into unwholesome and where they fall into wholesome. So anyway in the beginning as we start to meditate we see what's going on here in the mind and we see the repercussions of things that we've done or not done or said or not said and things we're taking care of, things we haven't taken care of. We see, we start to see the repercussions of that and it's quite interesting, you know, just to see and then the important thing is to see that and just to understand, oh, it's like this because of, you know, it can be that things come up from really old conditioning, you know, childhood conditioning, there's like, oh, that's that scenario that happened that was so painful and it could be like that or it could be recognizing that we're a bit lazy, you know, so then we don't, we don't bother to do those things that are beautiful and beneficial for ourselves because when we stop and start to pay attention to the breath, you see those things and you kind of feel like, oh, I don't really want to be lazy and I'd like to do those things and so that feeling is really good, you know, it doesn't feel good but it's a really good feeling because it's an encouragement to step up, you know, to align your life and not just to be kind of slack and lazy and procrastinating because it doesn't help or it might be that we've done really harmful things, you know, even in the long past and covered them up, denied them, tried to forget them or maybe we're still doing them, you know, and hoping nobody notices, you know, you know, that and when we stop to meditate, we see those things, they come up and then they're like, oh, you realize there's no hiding from your own mind in the meditate and that's a good thing. So then the discomfort, the awkwardness, the remorse that might arise, this is a really good thing because this is guiding us back on track to stop doing those harmful things to ourselves or others and to maybe sometimes we have to go back and repair things in there. So when I first went into the monastery, I realized after a while, oh, you know, there's a few people I've left in situations that are not a good way and I had an old landlord, I'm probably my first landlord, I think that and I was like, oh, I left in a really bad way and then just really need to like go back and repair that and apologize and acknowledge and so sometimes it can be like that, that we see the stuff that we need to sort out and this is all good and then as we see the things that we've been doing or not doing that are causing harm to ourselves and others, it inspires a wish to align with a in an ethical way or with a certain it's a tricky word, virtue. I think we haven't got a really a word in English that hasn't got some some loaded meanings maybe because it's the way these things have been used in the past but virtue, I know that I would have cringed at that word at one time but it probably is close to what we want to talk about what I want to talk about this quality of virtue which is which I think of is almost like the fragrance of a flower, you know, it's a beautiful quality, it has a certain fragrance to it, beautiful fragrance and so aligning one's life with virtue with with ways of being that are not harming ourselves and not harming others as much as we can, as much as we can through our thoughts, our speech and action and you know this is the thing with meditation even if nobody knows, perhaps from us, when we sit in meditation then we know it's like it kind of smells bad here you know and you don't want to sit with this unpleasant smell or feeling we have here so then you've got to do something about it, you've got to change the patterns. So beautiful in the beginning that one way of seeing that is is the quality of celer or ethical convert or developing virtue so we take, we start off maybe not so beautiful and some people do start off quite beautiful and come with quite pure hearts actually but many of us start off there's a bit of a mess going on in here you know and there might be things that we've done to ourselves, it might be things that others have done to us, it might be things that we've done to others or a whole mix of those and then we find you know it's not pleasant, it's not helpful, it's not going, it's not taking me where I want to go and so we realign our life with a virtuous life, not classically, not intentionally taking life, not stealing, not taking what doesn't belong to us, having respect for our relationships, so the agreement for the agreement of our relationships, respecting the agreements and not lying, so it's the actual translation, which is from lying which is a very ordinary and acceptable thing to do these days but it's more and more so in fact lying and cheating but it's not, it's maybe short-term game for long-term harm so particularly those four, an ethical alignment and so the dhamma is beautiful in the beginning that it kind of beautifies us as we align our life with those qualities those practices of harmlessness and trustworthiness and truthfulness and then beautiful in the middle so when we have that as a foundation then we can start to develop our meditation practice more deeply and so beautiful in the middle can be this this practice of developing our meditation, so samadhi and in the in those deeper states of meditation when the mind really settles deeply it shows us a different aspect of reality so when we're still on the surface of things it's like it's like being on the surface of the sea you know on the surface we move all the waves and up and down so we can see a little bit in there what's going on with our meditation so that's how it is when we stay on the surface of our mind and then we can dive deep deep deep deep with some oxygen we go we can go deep into the sea and then we find all kinds of wonder and beauty and then we can go deeper and it gets really still very peaceful so it's like that so we can let that in our meditation and then it can be just if we stay on the surface it all stays a bit choppy and we go deeper we settle more deeply starts to get joyful peaceful and beautiful we start to see we start to experience our mind in ways we haven't experienced it before can be it can be this way and we see a sort of a perspective of reality that we can't see from the surface of the water or the surface of the mind so this is a way that the dharma is beautiful in the middle so with that with that foundation of of silo and good conduct good ethics virtue then we're able to really deepen our meditation practice and then we see how beautiful the mind can be a beautiful a present moment can be and then beautiful in the end is the fruits the fruits of our practice so it's not just about having a nice experience in the meditation either and honestly in our meditation it's very varied so sometimes we have to work through all kinds of stuff before you can get to that piece and from debt for malbeing and that's worth it both for the experience and for the clearing out the stuff that we don't need to keep anymore and then there's the fruit of our practice the wisdom that arises through the practice and it's a wisdom that's this clear and natural it's not it's not a knowledge it's not about knowledge so gaining knowledge and understanding in an intellectual way but it's a direct experience and understanding through through settling and deepening and stealing and seeing clearly and so this is the dharma that's beautiful in the end and it's like there can be little glimpses of truth and then there can be quite big breakthroughs also into seeing clearly and that truly is beautiful and wonderful and then those keep going if we keep practicing those those awakenings keep going until you know full awakening which is definitely possible even now and it takes a bit of work so I don't know if I I can't they say you have to be fully awakened to recognize someone who's fully awakened so I don't know whether I've ever met anyone who is or not I must admit but I've met a couple of people maybe three certainly two who are very very um three and when you meet these people it's it's like it's it's quite extraordinary they're just different this is a completely different orientation their orientation is about me it's not about me what people think about me what I need what I want this this is not going on it's it's an awakeness and a responsiveness to the present and it's motivated by compassion and wisdom it's very very beautiful and playful often beautiful and very high and responsive sparkly so this is our potential and it's all here and it's it's clouded by by so many things so this this practice invites us to experience the Dhamma that is beautiful in the beginning beautiful in the middle and beautiful in the end and then I so I bring that up just to illuminate that you know that that's this is possible you know this is this is the path through and then we need to do the work so we stop and sit for a while and then we see a little bit of what we need to do then we work on that we just we just work from wherever wherever we start where we are whatever that is we just start where we are a little by little by moment and then some of us we we can have any clear insights and breakthroughs and so beautiful or even just a pleasant meditation for me wonderful but that's not having a pleasant meditation it's not the goal as such it's not the the purpose but it can be very very nice it's the insight that arises from a practice that's that's what's really really meaningful so you know we need to we have to sort of put the work in to to pay attention here in a really interested patient and compassionate way because the work can be long for some of us some maybe not but if it is it doesn't matter and if you first you know if you start and meditate and you like my goodness what a mess and that's okay that's where you're starting from it's like you know you go into house that's been abandoned and like where do we even start we start start by the front door let's make your way in like an in-road let's start let's start getting into a room let's start with nothing there and let's figuratively speaking you just start where you are and yeah the practice it's sometimes we we can really feel like we're progressing a lot you know and things going really well and it can feel great and then and then you know minutes later can feel like oh my goodness it's all a terrible mess and thoughts over thinking you know it can be like that and so the thoughts and some carers and probably the thoughts that come up in the mind are so believable very very believable so the things can be going really well and then some thought comes in sailing us and and we believe it and then that we think everything's kind of down the pan and then we take a moment and notice how that feels and give a little room for the possibility of it not being as solid as it looks and then notice it as we stay with it a bit and it starts to change or maybe somebody says something that opens a window you know so then the what had seemed really solid and real starts to be less so because the thoughts can really catch us and trap us away into a much smaller reality than is our true heritage so yeah giving giving those a moment and also having good friends you know kalyanamita so that word kalyana again kalyana lovely or beautiful so dhamma is kalyana beautiful in the beginning middle and end and also spiritual friends and then is kalyanamita so beautiful friends or beautiful french or a lovely friendship and that's friends who you really want the best for us you know and who can show us when we're going off and who can give us the benefit of the doubt and allow us to make mistakes and start again and and hold us to that also these are those are beautiful friends