2023-01-06-Gil-What is the Dharma? (5 of 5) Dharma as Transformation

4:53AM Jan 10, 2023

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

dharma

practice

grow

fruit

freedom

unfold

wonderful

attainment

process

conveyor belt

sense

buddha

point

release

dharma practice

called

arose

thai

life

fullness

So as an introduction, for the last talk on what is the dharma, I want to say that there's a long history of Buddhists down through the centuries and different countries having a celebratory attitude towards the dharma. Sometimes when you spend a lot of time with the Buddhist monastics you don't get quite the sense of celebration, because they're kind of required to have a decorum of being calm, quiet, and not so expressive. And, but that many Buddhists will celebrate that's saying, and, and chant and have a quiet, you know, historically quite a wonderful, rich celebratory feeling. But the dharma feels they feel so fortunate, so lucky. It's so wonderful. That word dharma represents something huge for them. The the Buddhist teacher, very famous kind of somewhat naturalistic, teacher in Thai and Thailand, ajaan, Buddha dasa great intellectually kind of Reformed much of Thai Buddhism, from much of its superstitious background in earlier times, times. And he, he was involved in a lot of inter religious dialogue, or some of some of it. And he was quite content to equate the Christian and Muslim idea of God with dharma. So exactly what he meant by that and how it worked. But the kind of has the same place, that His word dharma, this concept is this, this reality of dharma, has this huge place in the life of Buddhists that they celebrate them, they're, you know, they're lighted for and inspired for, and they go to it for protection. It's something that protects them and, and that keeps them safe. So it's a powerful and wonderful topic. And, and I think that as dharma practice, Buddha's practice, deepens and fills out and becomes grows, that there can be a wonderful sense of that there is this kind of support protection. There is this kind of inspiration, this growth, this tremendous value, that comes from the dharma, that almost treats it as something that is, has its has its own existence. However, the dharma that we're talking about, is inseparable for the people who practice the dharma. It's the dharma is something which kind of exists within us, as a natural process is something natural, and that's available. If we make room for it, if we allow for it if we practice. And it's a little bit like a someone who lives a very stressful life, very busy, always running and doing and all that. And their health suffers dramatically. And the doctors say you have to, you know, you're not gonna live much longer unless you change. And the person Sure enough changes radically, maybe they retire they, they go on a long vacation, they slow down, they meditate, they go on retreats, and and mostly they stopped doing. And in that not doing, there's a whole settling and opening and healing process that could unfold. That is mostly not because they did the healing. But that's a natural process by which you so much of the distressing, brings brings with it allows it where there's just a movement towards health that the body can do some degree in some ways, allow for an even if it's not physical health, there are people for whom there has been who have who feel that they were healed, while they were dying. Which some people that sound that's counterintuitive or kind of goes doesn't quite work. They weren't cured. But there was a deep psychological, spiritual healing that happened in the process of dying. That also didn't necessarily seem to be their own doing, but it was available here in this letting go this opening up This allowing something to unfold and flower and come to fruit. So, the last meeting, meaning that I want to talk about this week about dharma is that, while I would go back to in the first day, I said that there were three primary meanings of dharma. The first is, the, and all of them are kind of verbs kind of important to understand them as involvement and engagement that is involved. When we talk about the dharma, it's not something abstract removed, though it's easy to kind of see, well, the dharma is the teachings of the Buddha, I'll get a book out to read about it. But the real dharma is comes from engagement. And so the first one is the dharma, which is the process of learning, learning those teachings. Not just learning the memorizing them, but engaging them and arguing with them and, and exploring them and, and discovering how they work for ourselves. The second is, meaning the dharma is the practice that we do, the dharma practice. And in some ways, that probably is the most important, no, I put a tremendous value in practice love it, and and the third is attainment, the higher arrival higher coming into a new way of being, sometimes it's called, when there's a three fold definition of the dharma. This last one, sometimes it's called penetration, so to, to penetrate for oneself to know for oneself, that the heart of the dharma, but not by just the knowing of it, but the transformation of it. So this, the last of the three kind of definitions for dharma is to, is the attainments that transform us. So we can maybe call dharma is transformation, in the realm of freedom, in the realm of of all the good that the dharma represents, including compassion, and care and love, and freedom and wisdom, and joy, and happiness, and honesty, and a lot of things that come. And so this attainment, this last, what dharma is that itself is sometimes divided into three categories. And that is that it's, it's called this wonderful terms. The first to fruit, path and fruit. There's the path of, we practice, and it puts us on a path that dharma is onward leading. There's a road, there's a conveyor belt, there's a stream that we enter into. And so the entering into the stream entering into this path is a phenomenal, wonderful thing usually doesn't happen in an instant. But usually people who practice at some point it dawns on them, wait a minute, there's something happening growing, developing, unfolding here, that's supporting me, I'm really in the stream, I'm in this current, I'm on the conveyor belt, there's not really any getting off it anymore. That says, a powerful momentum, for health than any and freedom. So that's the path. And when we kind of enter into it, and then there's the path comes to fruition. It has, it's called fruit. And isn't it also beautiful kind of organic metaphor, that of something which naturally grows and ripens. At first, the tree there's not even the leaves and the after the winter, and first the leaves grow and then the flowers appear and then the flowers get pollinated and that the fruit begins to grow slowly and, and then by the end of the season, the fruit is ripe. And a wonderful example of fruit here fruition of practice, is that if you leave the fruit alone, like an apple alone in the tree, at some point, the connection of the stem of the of the apple to the branch falls apart and the apple falls. And so the same way that at some point in this practice, we ripen and then most natural process of it all is that when the ripening is full, which we can't know when exactly it is that something releases something let's go in a deep, full complete way and you don't put the apple back up on the tree. He put tape on and try to get it to be attached to the tree again, it's it's a kind of irreversible that process once it falls off.

So fruition is something that's irreversible change transformation. And that the third is nirvāna nibbāna. And this is the experience the knowing of the absence of clinging, it's the release. And knowing that release knowing that freedom, of, of no longer clinging, resisting craving, wanting holding on tight, to ideas to anything to and, and that idea of path. Fruit and release freedom is available in hints and small ways when very beginning of persons practice. It's at some point as we practice is really helpful to get a feel or a sense intuition. For the momentum for what's opening up that oh, something's opening here. As feel a sense of, of it comes to a fruition it comes to there's a fullness, there's a possibility of really being free here. And then there's a feeling of the sense that of what that freedom that release is like. And these these are, can be found just right there in mindfulness or breathing, to really trust the coming and going the arising and passing of the inhale. So the exhales, as I pointed to in the meditate meditation just now that there can be little hints that oh, this is what it's about. Here is the here it is, it's unfolding. From the beginning to the end of the meditation, something unfolded, I was in the stream, I was in this onward leading nature and more settled more open. A little more sense of being overheard being released and not caught. Take these into account, no, these appreciate these so they can grow. And when it doesn't go in some nice linear fashion that way. Sometimes with practice, that conveyor belt or practice brings us to places in our lives that we have to have difficulty with, we have encountered the unresolved issues of our life. And then we can maybe appreciate that, oh, I don't want to look at this, I don't want to deal with this. This is painful. But the dharma knows best. The dharma knows it's time for me to be able to practice with this too. So it's going to be a little bit more difficult. There are quite a bit more difficult now for a while. But this is good. That in the context of doing this practice, this has arose. And now I got to face this and work with this. And so this gives a edge the freedom that we can live with the freedom of being willing to be with the difficulties of our life, to practice with those as well. And if our freedom we're finding this practice doesn't include a certain kind of freedom and a willingness to practice also with our difficulties, then I think this dharma doesn't have a chance to grow into his fullness, then it's not really a real thing that has to do with our life. So dharma. dharma is the foundation for this. And hopefully, this understanding that we offer I offered this week will often offer a foundation for what we'll do in the in the upcoming months here and on this morning teachings here. So thank you very much. And next week, Monday, and Tuesday, I'll be at the retreat center. And so I'll be broadcasting from there. And so you'll see a little bit different or quite a different location and and probably I'll sit where with but that Chara the statue of the nun, Pata Chara that we used to have for a while here, early in the pandemic, but now it's down in IRC. So thank you, and I look forward to Monday.