2022-09-02 The Dharma (5 of 5) To Be Known Personally by the Wise
2:55PM Sep 2, 2022
Speakers:
Gil Fronsdal
Keywords:
dhamma
experience
changing
onward
knowing
practice
wise
welfare
present moment
flow
breathing
teachings
buddha
nature
intuit
dharma
ouch
delusion
moving
impermanence
We come to the fifth and last talk on the characteristics, qualities of the dharma, the dhamma. That has been well spoken of by the Buddha. So to some degree, it's talking about his teaching, and what is, but it's also talking about what his teachings, what his dhamma is pointing to. What the dhamma is, is the truth that we are discovering, through this practice. And it's also the, the, the way we discover it, the means by which we discover it. And this combination of the means of what we're discovering, and what we're discovering, speaks to this intimacy, certainly of mindfulness practice, but also the intimacy of the means and the goal, that the goal is to be free to be aware and open, free, unrestricted way that not doing it completely but in partial waste, beginning to, to live that goal in the means to practice being present, in a clear, direct, full way, here. And these five qualities of the dhamma that I'm going through this week, is to is the dhamma, which is visible here. That it's now it's immediate. That is
inviting inspection, inviting us to see come and see, to this coming to see opening to see the here. Now, seeing here. Now, that's kind of the heart of what we're doing here. And if we enter this world of seeing, knowing being present here, and now then we find that something opens for us the an open door or open the current of what's onward leading, we can see a path we see a movement towards what is wholesome, unhealthy where the all is, we see the ouch and we can see how clinging and grasping and hate and delusion and ambition is a freezing of time is a being stuck outs, you know without being in the free in the free flow of time being free in the thaw in time, in the flow of here and now. And we feel the outcome of that. And as we see it and be with it, there's a some point we see or intuit or feel, there's something an alternative to that. And that alternative, we get a sense of it is the ah is the possibility of non greed, non hatred, non delusion, non conceit, non reactivity, just here in a relaxed open way and suddenly begins to flow and to move when we start flowing in the flow of the present moment we start being carried by this wholesome healthy direction of practice of awe. And then this has to be experienced, this done must be experienced, the last quality is the dharma has to be experienced, directly experience or that actually languages. This dhamma is to be personally experienced by the wise. So personally experienced by the wise. So we're talking about something that in a sense only you yourself can really experience know for yourself. So I don't know if it's the best examples, but maybe only you know that you're hungry, on you know, you can tell people and maybe you can give symptoms of it to people. But it's a the experience of hunger is internal to oneself. The experience of having an itch, people might not know you have an itch, but you certainly can know it. You have to pee, that's something we experienced for ourselves. So certainly, so there might be better examples for each of you what I came up with, but they did some things only we can experience for ourselves. And so there is a way in which this dharma is to enter into that world which we can only experience we ourselves can grains personally, and the way there's ouches in AWS is really something we experience experientially we can know that for ourselves. And we can know for ourselves whether things are stuck, or whether things are flowing and moving. Maybe other people can intuit that looking at how we behave. But this is something to be experienced for oneself, really. So this is almost internal, or this deep, very personal, very intimate involvement with the present moment with here and our direct experience. And what we can experience most valuably is not complicated. So this is not an engineering job. It's not some sophisticated analysis. It's not remembering causes and understanding why things happen or planning out the future, what should happen. It's rather than there's something extremely powerful and freeing about keeping it radically simple in the present moment, the only place where we can really directly personally know for ourselves, how things are shifting and changing moving, how they appear and disappear, their inconstancy, the Emperor impermanence. And, and not to be straining, to see that, but more like resting back into it, and seeing the changing nature of that. So, this personally experienced by the wise, the experience wise, that a wise person
is mentioned here. And, and now, my favorite definition that the Buddha gives for a wise person is wise person is concerned with the welfare of self, the welfare of others, the welfare of self and others. And the welfare of all beings, I think is such a beautiful definition of wisdom, because it doesn't require opening up all the dharma books and learning all the lists and all the teachings. It's more of an attitude is something that arises within. But as a practice deepens a wise person, and part of the reason a wise person is interested in the welfare of everyone, including oneself, is because of the direct experience of the moment, we see very clearly, this, ah, an ouch, we can feel the movement to the to what we're welfare is where well-being is, where pieces and, and that comes together with seeing impermanence and change. Because when we don't see that changing, impermanent, moving nature of reality, we're probably locked on in some way we frozen, we've gotten contracted or caught, or in some way on something that some preoccupation and maybe trying to think about how things can can things really be in constant and changing so much, we started thinking about that we've kind of removed ourselves from the experience of directness, immediacy of what's changing. And we can feel that movement, we can feel the ouch of that may be very, very subtle, but a little bit of strain or tension. And we can feel that there is a way in which they are comes from coming back into the river of change of flow and movement, and, and all that. And to see this is not an easy thing I'm talking about. So you can't just decide to sit down and do it. But as a practice deepens. And as we settle in more and more and feel more confident, and more at ease, and we're able to kind of stay mindful it over the President, we're continuously at some point, this opens up for us, we start seeing the changing nature of our experience, the changing nature of our knowing of experience, sometimes we're more aware of how experience is changing, like the breathing sensations are changing. Sometimes we're more aware of how the knowing of it is changing moving phenomena, that the knowing is operates a little bit, sometimes independent of what we have chosen to know. Because if we start thinking, you know, the mind is kind of note the knowing mind knows different things through the sound outside. And now we know the sound rather for a moment rather than for the breathing. There's a thought about how much time is left in this meditation, and we know that and then we're back into the breathing. We might be knowing something about the breath. And then we noticed that now next what we know is we noticed that there's some sensation that was in that area of the chest where we're doing breathing, but you know, maybe not directly connected to breathing How did you shift out of the How did the knowing move there knowing changed. And all this not all this knowing of change is at the heart of, of what some people are called in translate into what's called vijjā. In Pāli, and vijjā, some people translate as True Knowledge. vijjā is liberating knowledge, that liberating understanding or knowing be just the opposite of avijjā, which is ignorance. So if we use ignorance and the opposite in English, I guess would be Gnosis. But knowing, understanding, seeing and so wise person is a is a venue is that the word is connected to this word viriya. And so someone who knows what's beneficial, what knows what welfare is, is concerned with it, and can see that in the direct moment of being attuned to the changing, quiet, flowing nature of phenomena. And in that awareness of that, not looking for freedom, but in the awareness of all that, freedom is revealed. A letting go and non clinging is revealed,
to be personally experienced by the wise to know for yourself from the inside, that the mind is not clinging to anything attached to anything holding on to anything, at least for a short period of time, trusting that finding that being that is, is this art of this dhamma that the Buddha is talking about. So, so we have at this dharma
spoken by the Buddha, well spoken is the dharma of the Buddha. It is visible here, it's immediate. Now. It is to be see, it is inviting us to see deeply it is onward leading and to be personally experienced by the wise. And in Pāli, this is often chanted in Pāli and my Pāli Chanting is not so great, but I'll offer you my best effort for it. Spa Koto bhagavato Dumbo son de Tico kellyco A persico. Oopah Neko Chatham Chatham very terrible venue, he. So you have to kind of be generous to the chanting. But that's the Pāli. So thank you. And I hope that this kind of teachings about the dhamma can give you some deeper trust and confidence in the mindfulness. And don't be so concerned about how far your practice are whether what I'm talking about today, this week, is exactly where you are in your practice, but have confidence that doing this practice, it's onward leading, and you don't you're not necessarily responsible for the onward leading nature of it. You're setting the conditions for it by being present and mindful. And then when the time is right, that dhamma is onward leading within us. And may you become a wise person, free, liberated and concern for the welfare of all May all beings be well
