Enlightenment or Bust (Retreat at Spirit Rock)

Teachers
Joseph Goldstein
Date
July 21, 2019
Duration
57:55
Center
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
Retreat
July Insight

Audio

Transcript

0:01 There's a book by the author Rene D 'Aumal called Mount Analog, and it's sort of an allegorical description of a spiritual journey using the metaphor of climbing a mountain. And he has some very good advice about how to undertake this journey. He said, keep your eye fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look right in front of you. The last step depends upon the first. Don't think you're there just because you see the summit. Suggest a fix

0:45 Be sure of the next step. But don't let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends upon the And I love that last little piece. The last step depends upon the first. You have to take the first steps. But the first step also depends on the last. And so even though we're at or toward the beginning of the retreat, this evening I'd like to talk a bit about the end of the path. Because the direction of our journey, the direction of our first steps, depends on our understanding of what the last step is. and so it's helpful to have that comprehensive view of the direction that we're going in So the French philosopher and political activist and mystic Simone Weil, she wrote, What people are looking for is not wrong. Suggest a fix

2:03 That's us. Suggest a fix

2:11 You know, although we may call it by many different names, we might call it love or peace or enlightenment or awakening, in some fundamental way, What we're all looking for is a genuine happiness, a lasting kind of happiness, a sense of completion, a sense of fulfillment. And this is precisely what the Buddhist teachings are about. Suggest a fix

2:43 They're about finding or realizing or awakening to this potential that's within us. The problem is, as Simone Weil says, most of us are looking for it in the wrong place. Suggest a fix

3:00 And it's just this misdirected craving for happiness. It's our misdirected desire for happiness that keeps the whole wheel of saṃsāra. It's the Buddhist term for just the endless cycle of conditioned existence. It's our misdirected desire for happiness that keeps us bound to this wheel, endlessly turning. And so the Buddha Talk to this very directly. And often he would be talking to the order of monastics and he'd refer to them as bhikkhus. Suggest a fix

3:47 But bhikkhus in a more general sense also means everyone on the path. Everybody walking on the path could be referred to as a bhikkhu. So when you hear this as the Buddha gives his teachings and he says bhikkhus he's talking to you. So listen, you know, with that ear. Suggest a fix

4:32 That's very explicit. You know, he really nails what this quality of mind is that keeps us I do not envision even one other fetter. fettered by which beings go wandering and transmigrating for a long, long time like the fetter of craving. Suggest a fix

4:42 Transmigrating even within this one lifetime, just through all the ups and downs of our lives. So what is craving? Although we're familiar with that word, it's not an esoteric word. It's probably not one that we use all that often, you know, in our daily lives. And yet the Buddha is really highlighting this particular quality of mind. So it's worth... Really exploring and trying to understand its meaning and nuances. So what is craving and how do we experience it in our lives? So craving or desire is the translation of the Pāli word taṇhā. And taṇhā means thirst. Sometimes it's translated as the fever of unsatisfied longing. And I really like these translations of thirst and fever. Suggest a fix

5:51 As a translation of taṇhā, even more than craving, because those words of thirst or fever really can give us a visceral sense of what the mind quality is like. Just think of when you were really thirsty and how compelling that is, what a strong primal feeling it is. That's the meaning of taṇhā, which is often translated as craving. So Suggest a fix

6:28 in English we often use the words desire and craving interchangeably, but this can often be confusing because desire in English has a wide range of meanings. We use it in a lot of different ways, that term. Suggest a fix

6:51 Sometimes desire does mean the thirst or fever of longing associated with greed and grasping and clinging. So sometimes that's exactly what desire means. But sometimes desire simply means the motivation to do something. Suggest a fix

7:14 You know, I have the desire for awakening. Or I have a desire to serve. I have a desire to be of service, to be of help. So that's the use of the word desire in a very different way. So when we hear the Buddha talk about the end of desire and the end of craving, you really need to understand That is a very specific kind of desire. And there are many other kinds of desires that can be quite wholesome. So you don't want to confuse these two. Suggest a fix

7:50 For tonight's talk, I will be using the terms desire and craving interchangeably. But keep in mind that in other contexts, the word desire can mean many other things. So you don't want to get confused. used by this linguistic usage. Suggest a fix

8:16 The Buddha pointed out, with his usual incisive clarity, some particular fields of craving that misdirect us from the happiness and from the peace that we aspire to. Suggest a fix

8:38 And tonight I'd like to explore two of these areas of craving. The first is the craving for sense pleasures. And the second is what the Buddha called craving for becoming. Suggest a fix

8:55 Now the craving and desire for sense pleasures is the most obvious. I mean, this is not hard to see. It's the ones we are most familiar with. You know, these are all the pleasant sights and sounds and scents and tastes and sensations in the body. All these pleasant, agreeable sense objects. That we desire, that we want, that we crave. They're desirable and they're agreeable to us. And we could also include all the pleasant states of mind. Suggest a fix

9:37 So all of this, this craving or desire for sense pleasures, this is just our usual engagement with the world. Suggest a fix

9:49 You know, as we're living our lives, we enjoy and want pleasant experiences. And as much as possible, we'd like to avoid unpleasant experiences. Suggest a fix

10:08 Do any of you crave unpleasant experiences? There may be, but it's not common. You know, it just seems so natural. It seems completely natural. And of course we want pleasant things and we want to avoid unpleasant things. So this just seems completely natural and normal. And it is. But here, right here, This is where the Buddha begins a very interesting analysis of this situation. He did not condemn sense pleasures as being sinful. So that's not at all part of the Buddhist framework. Suggest a fix

10:58 Rather, in his analytic and we might even say scientific introspective approach, he began to ask some very He pointed questions about his life experience. Suggest a fix

11:17 The first question he asked of himself, what is the gratification in the world? That's a fundamental question of what gratifies us in the world, in our experience. And as a young prince, as it's told, he enjoyed the whole range of sense pleasures. He led a very privileged life in that sense and was fully immersed in the enjoyment of these pleasures. So they were not at all foreign to him. And then as it's related in the discourses, the thought came to him, whatever pleasure and joy there is in the world, this is the gratification in the world. That makes sense. Whatever pleasure and joy there is in the world, that's the gratification that we get from it. If there was no pleasure and joy in the world, beings would not become enamored of it. So we become enamored of the world, of sense pleasures, precisely because they do bring us a kind of happiness. So we need to acknowledge that. Our common understanding of our lives, right? Different kinds of sense pleasures bring a certain kind of happiness to us and that's why we keep going after them. Suggest a fix

13:06 It's precisely because there is this gratification. So the Buddha is not saying there's no gratification in this. He's saying there is gratification and that's why we crave them. Suggest a fix

13:22 But rather than simply listening to the Buddha's words, Suggest a fix

13:31 It's always good to listen to the words as instructions for our own introspection. Because it's not about, oh, the Buddha said this and we either agree or we disagree. That's not the point at all. The Buddha is pointing to something and he's inviting us to look at where he's pointing so we can see for ourselves. So we can take the very same questions that he asked of himself and ask it of ourselves. What is the gratification that we find in our lives? That would be worth reflecting on. What different experiences in the body, in the mind, are we enamored of? What different kinds of experiences do we desire and want? Suggest a fix

14:30 That would be an interesting internal survey, just to get a very clear picture, instead of just muddling through life, going after this and going after that, but really to get a clear picture. Yeah, this is where I find gratification. These are the delights that I become enamored of. So we personalize these teachings. Suggest a fix

14:52 So our cravings and gratifications seem to come in a very wide range of intensities and frequencies. So on one end of the craving spectrum might be the obsessive desires that consume our lives. You know, there might be addictive desires for food, for sex, for alcohol, for drugs, for success, for power, for fame, for wealth, for possessions, for comfort. Even for some people there's an obsessive desire for love. So the mind can create this... Craving and fall into this craving for this wide range of different experiences. And it's interesting that a good part of the great literature of the world is really about these obsessive cravings that one might say infect human beings. And we're all part of this. We can see this in ourselves to some degree or other. Suggest a fix

16:22 And in so many ways, you know, this Western culture, it just feeds this kind of craving. In fact, we could almost say the whole society revolves around it. One of my favorite examples was a sign in a storefront, store window in New York, and the sign said, Don't let desire pass you by. Suggest a fix

17:00 The country would probably collapse if we let desires pass us by. So that's the message, you know. We grow up with that, of feed the desire, as if it's a good thing. So it takes a lot of care to begin to unpack this conditioning within ourselves because it is so pervasive. Suggest a fix

17:27 Or we may have sense desires and cravings and wants. Not necessarily on this obsessive level, you know, that's consuming our lives, but still may be the driving force behind many of our actions. Now, what drives us to do things in the world? And there'll be a wide range of motivations, but it would be very interesting to pay attention to see to what extent. It's desire or wanting or craving sense pleasures that are driving our actions. Just so we get a clear picture of our lives and the choices we're making. Suggest a fix

18:20 We can also watch desires, and this is really interesting on retreat, I've found. We can watch desires as just quickly passing thoughts in the mind. You know, passing thoughts of wanting. And what I found interesting is to see even these light passing thoughts to often see how deeply persistent they are. And I've had many, many examples of this being on retreat. I could be sitting and walking. You know, maybe during walking meditation the thought will come, oh, a cup of tea would be nice. And I just watch it come and go. Take a few more steps. Oh, yeah, a cup of tea. Take a few more steps, just let her come and go. Cup of tea. A few more steps, cup of tea. And at some point, go get the cup of tea. So it's like a blade of grass, you know, pushing up through cement. This very small thing, but with such deep roots, craving and desire is a primal energy within us. So even though at... In particular situations, the content may seem trivial. The energy behind it is not trivial. So we really want to begin to explore this part, this aspect of our lives because it plays such a powerful role. Suggest a fix

20:04 It's also very helpful to see how seemingly trivial desires, momentary desires, can sometimes strengthen Into really strong habits. We go from I want to I need to I must have. You know, and that becomes the trajectory. Suggest a fix

20:33 Just as a totally ridiculous example of this powerful tendency. So I was on a self retreat at home and I was just in the habit of enjoying A cup of coffee in the morning for breakfast, you know, kind of get the whole system going. And I had, you know, all the paraphernalia, the coffee beans in the grinder and, you know, making the perfect cup of coffee. One day I go downstairs and the coffee grinder didn't work. And the first word that came to my mind, disaster. Suggest a fix

21:23 Did you hear that in the back? Disaster. Suggest a fix

21:27 And in that moment, I felt it to be that. Suggest a fix

21:34 I mean, given the state of the world, a broken coffee grinder doesn't really rise to the level of disaster, but it felt like that because of the power of the habit and the power of the wanting, the power of craving. I mean, I had to laugh at it, you know, finally. Suggest a fix

22:02 You know, so many of these different patterns of craving and desire, they're so familiar to us. It's just how we live. It's just what our lives are about. They just seem like the very ordinary fabric of life. This is what life is about. Suggest a fix

22:26 And because there's so much a part of who we take ourselves to be, We really, in a way, define ourselves and define our personality by the things we want and the things we desire. So there's so much a part of who we take ourselves to be that very often they're invisible. We're just not paying attention to it because they seem so ordinary. Suggest a fix

22:55 So just as an experiment, a retreat environment while you're here would be a very good opportunity Just to notice the gratification that comes from even very simple sense pleasures. Just so you attune to the dynamic of anticipated sense pleasure and then the wanting and the craving and then the gratification. So again, it goes from just being a theoretical description that the Buddha laid out. We internalize the experience of it. We understand it from the inside. So you might notice, you know, just during the day, what things during the day give you moments of delight? Suggest a fix

23:52 Here they're probably limited, but there are enough. You know, what do you become enamored of? Even on a, you know, a slight scale. Maybe it's lunch. You know, all the good food and you can feel that kind of... Suggest a fix

24:12 Back up a minute. Notice the difference between when you're doing walking meditation back and forth and when you're walking to lunch. You might be walking just as slowly, Suggest a fix

24:30 energetically. Suggest a fix

24:36 We're enamored, we're desiring, we're craving that pleasant hit. Or maybe it's the hot shower in the morning or a particularly delectable moment. Suggest a fix

24:50 It's when after a long day and you just lie down in bed, you know, that first moment, it's Suggest a fix

25:00 delightful. And we do become rather enamored of it. Suggest a fix

25:11 You can also investigate, you know, this conditioning in the enjoyment of pleasant fantasies in the mind. So it's not only the physical senses. The same dynamic is at work with pleasant, pleasurable, Mental experience. You know, it's possible to spend a long time on retreat just immersed and lost in pleasant fantasies. They might be, you know, pleasant food fantasies or maybe really exciting sexual fantasies or fantasies about your next perfect relationship. Whatever it may be, the mind is very creative. And we can spend a long time just enjoying the pleasure of these kinds of experiences. So at some point in this investigation, one might resonate with the Buddha's words, whatever gratification there is in the world, that I have found. Suggest a fix

26:25 Now that seems like a very ordinary statement, but Suggest a fix

26:32 that would be really useful to reflect on. Whatever gratification there is in the world, So we've all enjoyed endless number of agreeable things. Suggest a fix

26:50 Do we have that sense that whatever gratification there is in the world that I have already found? Or are we still holding out for some fantastic new taste or some unbelievably pleasant touch sensation? Do we still have the hope that there's something else out there that's going to do it for us? Suggest a fix

27:31 If we can come to some sense of whatever gratification there is in the world that I have found, based on our own experience, we might relax a little bit. Suggest a fix

27:46 Instead of that endless quest for the next hit of something, it's not going to be really any different than any of the previous pleasant hits that we've already had. you know, and... Suggest a fix

27:59 But we're seduced. You know, oh, the next one is going to be the big one. Okay. The Buddha did not stop in his understanding of gratification and what provides it. He then went a bit further in his exploration. Bhikkhus, that's you. I set out seeking the dangers of the world. So first, he's looking what is the gratification in the world, which is The pleasure of the sense delights. Then he said, well, what is the danger of the world? And danger is the translation, one translation, of the Pāli word adhinawa. And there are other translations which are a little more colloquial and alike. So we might think of this as, what are the drawbacks of the world? Or the disadvantages? Or the downside of things? Suggest a fix

29:08 And he continued, and whatever dangers or downsides there are in the world, that I have also found. Namely, that the world is impermanent, and because of that, ultimately unreliable, because nothing less, subject to change. So this is again not esoteric understandings. If we're paying attention, we can, I think, relate quite easily. To this comprehension of, yeah, there are all these pleasures and gratifications, but there is a downside in experience. Suggest a fix

29:58 Downside is that things are impermanent, unreliable, subject to change. But here's where most of us and the Buddha may take slightly different paths. For us, how many times when things are really good? When things are going well, they're easeful, we're enjoying our lives. You know, things are just rolling along in an easeful way. Suggest a fix

30:32 How often do we have enough interest and foresight and wisdom right in the midst of those good times to ask the question, well, what's the downside here? When I look at my own experience, not that often. Mostly I'm immersed in just the pleasure of the enjoyment. But that's, of course, what makes the Buddha the Buddha. He didn't just stop in that. He said, okay, in the midst of this, acknowledging that there is that kind of sense gratification, so he's not denying that, but in the midst of it, he asked that further question. Well, right in the midst of this experience, is there a downside? Is there a drawback? Suggest a fix

31:24 So there are several ways of understanding what these drawbacks of sense pleasures are. And again, it's worth just reflecting on it in our own lives because we're so easily seduced by the gratification. You know, we don't often look underneath. So one of the downsides, one of the drawbacks, is that in the end, These sense pleasures don't deliver on their promise of happiness. We think they will, and we hope they will, but they don't. Precisely because they don't last. Suggest a fix

32:20 We believe that they'll bring us happiness because of the pleasant feelings that come when we have pleasant sense experience. There's a pleasant feeling that we enjoy. Suggest a fix

32:39 And these experiences do bring some kind of happiness, so it's not to deny that. They do bring a kind of happiness for some time. But all of these pleasant feelings that come, you know, with beautiful sights and sounds and smells and touch and sensations and thoughts and all of it, Suggest a fix

33:02 with all of those pleasant experiences, the pleasant feelings associated with them are very, very transitory. And we know that. This is what's so amazing to me. You know, when we look back on our lives and look back on all the pleasant things we've experienced in our lives, which are countless, when we look back, their ephemeral nature is so apparent. It's like, where are they now? You know, where's the pleasure of lunch now? Yeah, totally gone. So, what's so amazing to me is we know this when we look back. But when we look ahead in anticipating the next pleasures, we just forget what we just learned. As if, oh, well, the next one is going to do it in a way that none of the other ones we've experienced have. So, Suggest a fix

34:11 our minds are a trip. And for me, the interest and the power and the delight in the meditation is just, Learning the tools for examining and understanding our own minds and our own hearts and how we get involved in things that just create more suffering and how it's possible to disentangle from that. That's really what we're doing here. It's this exploration of your own experience. Suggest a fix

34:51 If we keep going after these momentary sense pleasures or even ones that last for some little bit of time but eventually end as they all do. How many people are just living their lives that this is their life? You know, it's just always looking forward to the next pleasant hit of something. And then that passes and then looking for the next hit and the next hit and the next hit. And before we know it, our life's at an end without ever having come to a sense of fulfillment or a sense of peace or a sense of completion. So this is not an insignificant pattern. And that's why the Buddha gave such importance to understanding craving. It's the second noble truth. This is the cause of suffering in our lives. Suggest a fix

35:48 You know, as lay people, we are living. We're living in the world of sense. Object sense, pleasure sense, delights. Most of us are not leading renunciate lives. So to one extent or another, we are engaged in this. In this arena. But still, each one of us, everyone here on some level knows that it's not really the path to happiness. Because if you believed that it was, you'd be on some nice vacation someplace. And you wouldn't be here struggling with pain in your knee. So something brought you here. You know, and it's not so easy to kind of arrange to be here. So for each one of us, there is some very deep wisdom already there because that's what brought us here together. Suggest a fix

36:59 We all understand on some level that a growing realization of the dharma really does open up vast potentials. For a much deeper kind of happiness. Suggest a fix

37:21 So the first drawback of relying on sense pleasures for happiness is that they don't deliver. Ultimately, it's a very temporary, very temporary enjoyment. The second danger, the second drawback of sense of craving is when this desire or craving becomes an obsessive force in the mind. Which can lead to so many unwholesome actions. You know, newspapers are filled with stories of people doing all kinds of violent things or harmful things driven by one kind of craving or another. So one of my very favorite translation stories, which many of you have probably heard. Suggest a fix

38:22 One time I was sitting on a retreat with Saira Upandita. And he would speak in Burmese, and then the translator would translate into English. And at one point he was talking about sense desires, and he went on for quite a while, maybe five minutes or ten minutes in Burmese. And then the translator translated that whole long thing into four words. Suggest a fix

38:53 Lust cracks the brain. Suggest a fix

38:58 Lust cracks the brain. It does. Have you noticed? When that's strong, when that's really strong in the mind, it could be lust for anything, but when that's strong, we go crazy. And people do so many harmful things driven by that energy. So we need to take care. It's not the craving, the force of craving. It's not only about kind of the little broken coffee grinder and the disaster that that was. Sometimes craving really is a powerfully destructive force. And we see it in the world. Suggest a fix

39:59 When we take an interest in how all this is working, it can really lead to a much fuller and more engaged and wholesome and skillful relationship with the world. Suggest a fix

40:16 Okay, so this is the first arena of craving. And I spend so much time on it because it's so... It's so powerful in our lives and it's so obvious. This is not an esoteric teaching. But we need to pay attention to it. And again, I just want to reiterate, all of these dharma talks and everything we do here, it's not a question of listening and you either believe or you don't believe. It's all an invitation to look for yourselves. That's what the Buddha, he's just pointing us, just take a look within yourself to see, does this resonate? Is this true? Because that's where the transformative value is. It's not in the intellectual comprehension of it. So the second type of craving is more subtle and often goes unnoticed. And it's one which has a direct bearing on our meditation practice. And there are elements of this which have had really a profound effect on my own understanding of the meditative process. So this is what... The Buddha called craving for becoming. And it's the basic urge or desire to become this or that. In our continued existence, the craving for becoming. So one very familiar pattern of this might be the obsessively planning mind. Have you ever been caught up in a mind that just endlessly, obsessively planning? Imagining ourselves in some future situation and then thinking about how we get there and what we have to do and all the things involved in that. Suggest a fix

42:16 How often do we get lost in the mind creations of future self? Suggest a fix

42:26 So again, another interesting observation for you as you go through the day. Keep just an eye out or a general sense. Of how much time the mind is lost in either past or future. It's a lot. Our minds just get caught up in this desire for becoming. And then all the thought and emotion that goes with that. Suggest a fix

43:03 So just keep in mind, being lost in these thought fantasies is desire for becoming. But there is a way of planning as a useful tool of the mind. This is not to suggest we should never plan, but there is a huge difference between planning and being grounded in the moment, knowing we're doing it, thinking it through and coming to the end of it, but really being grounded in the present moment. There's a big difference between that and, as I'm sure you well know, being lost in the thought fantasies that just keep repeating themselves. So pay attention to that and really see that. Suggest a fix

43:48 One of the most striking experiences of craving for becoming very easy to observe is the feeling of rushing. Suggest a fix

44:02 You know, what does rushing mean? What's that feeling like? And we're all familiar with the feeling. But it's when we're ahead of ourselves. It's when the mind is already at its destination before we get there. We're already doing what we're aiming to do, but we're still here. And it's that toppling forward energy. Suggest a fix

44:29 A famous line from James Joyce from the Dubliners, a collection of stories, Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. Suggest a fix

44:42 That's us. A good part of the time we're living a short distance from our bodies. We're ahead of ourselves. So what is that? That's a kind of craving for becoming. It's like we're not settled back in the moment. We're wanting or craving and it's creating a very unbalanced energetic system. Suggest a fix

45:13 This is not insignificant because this understanding of craving for becoming is Suggest a fix

45:26 intimately connected with the understanding of, you could say, enlightenment or freedom or awakening. There's something right in this point that's Very, very powerful. Because very often, in fact probably most of the time, we forget that liberation or freedom is not about getting. It's not about becoming something. It's not about craving. It's not about holding on. The very path we're on and what we're practicing What is the essence of the practice? And this is why I started the talk saying it's good to have an eye on the last step because it informs how we take the first steps. When we understand that liberation is not about getting anything, it's about letting go, that changes how we're doing our practice. Suggest a fix

46:51 Are you familiar with the experience when you're sitting And it could be in the walking too, but I've noticed it a lot, you know, in my sitting meditation. And what I'm going to be talking about now is really quite subtle, but I think obvious enough that you will recognize it. When we're sitting and we're just, you know, with our experience, the breath or sensations or whatever it is, we're just there in a pretty easeful way. But have you ever noticed... Just this very subtle tendency to be leaning into the next moment. It's like we're leaning into the process. We're with this in order for this. We're taking this breath in order for the next thing to arise. So it's that slight forward leaning that is craving for becoming. Suggest a fix

47:54 A few years ago I was on self -retreat and I had a really vivid And in some way transformative experience of just this process. There's a line in the suttas, in the discourses, that's repeated quite frequently. And it's a line that sometimes is said, people will say it as an expression of their awakening moment. And sometimes it's a line that when people hear it, they get enlightened. Suggest a fix

48:35 Okay. Suggest a fix

48:42 Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. Incredibly simple. Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. Whatever, which is everything. Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. So I was sitting, I was sitting on retreat and, you know, I had read that line a million times and, yeah, everything rises and passes just seemed like an obvious statement. But this particular time on retreat, I was sitting, and for some reason that line came to my mind. But it's as if the line and the meaning of it dropped right into the process, the meditative process. So it was no longer on the intellectual level. It was like, whatever has in nature to arise will also pass away. So it was being applied in that very moment to the flow of experience. And then the conclusion became strikingly obvious right in this meditative process. If whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away, therefore there's nothing to want. Because whatever it is that I might want meditatively, not leaving aside kind of all the external things, whatever I might want meditatively will also pass away. Therefore, there's nothing to want. And in that moment, I was just seeing it so vividly. There's nothing to want. In that moment, I could feel the mind drop back from even that slight leaning into the next moment. It was like, not wanting. Suggest a fix

50:43 And even though it was just for maybe a few moments, it was enough to actually recognize And taste the quality or the experience of the mind free of craving. Because I could see the mind go from the lean, not Suggest a fix

51:09 wanting, anything. And the experience of the mind of not wanting. Not the concept of, the actual experience of the mind free of wanting, not wanting. Was one of, was just one of. Credible peace. And completion. There was nothing more to do for that moment. And I saw that it really was you could say a glimpse of the third noble truth. The first is that there's suffering or dukkha. The cause which is craving. The third noble truth is the end of dukkha which is the end of craving. So we can get a taste of it. Which is very real. It's not fabricated. And it may only last for a few moments. But as one Tibetan teacher would often instruct, practice it short moments many times. So we don't have to necessarily be practicing with this idea, oh, maybe some year I'll get to the end of craving, but that's ten lifetimes away. No, we can practice. The profundity of the end of craving for a moment or a few moments and actually taste it, actually experience what that is like. So that is a tremendous reorientation of our meditation practice. Suggest a fix

52:54 Because in some, just in some strange way, even though we may have heard all of these teachings, there's so much wanting that comes into the very meditation practice itself. You know, we're sitting and wanting something. Does it seem clear? It's clear to me. But I hope it is, because this was really a significant shift in my understanding, even after all these years of practice. This is after 45 years of practice. And this is one of the things that's so remarkable about the dharma. We're always just at the forward edge of our understanding. Wherever we are, we're at our own forward edge. And the dharma is so vast it just keeps opening. You know, and very often there can be these very seemingly small insights that have a profound effect on our understanding of the path. Suggest a fix

54:09 Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. Therefore, there's nothing to want. And so maybe just as an experiment sometimes when you're sitting, just occasionally drop in the phrase not wanting. Just not wanting. And see if there's any kind of release in the mind from that forward lean into the process. And then you'll get a sense of the relief, the ease, the peace. Suggest a fix

54:53 So in the early morning of the Buddha's enlightenment, it said at the first appearance of the morning star, when the Buddha realized full enlightenment, full awakening, it said that these words came to his mind, Suggest a fix

55:11 realized is the unconditioned, achieved is the end of craving. It couldn't be more explicit. He's just telling us. What the nature of the free mind is. What the nature of the mind at peace is. And again, we can touch it, we can taste it, we can experience it even briefly. Short moments, many times. And it transforms our understanding. Our understanding of our lives and all the choices we make and our understanding of the path and how we're practicing. Suggest a fix

55:55 So I just found that these moments of really touching this and understanding this Suggest a fix

56:05 The mind not wanting, not craving, settled back into that openness. Even those short moments can then become a pole star, a sense of direction for us, so we really have a clear understanding of where we're going and what we're essentially doing in our practice. Because there are so many instructions and methodologies and Things to do, but they're all in the service of not wanting. And we don't want to forget that. So I'll just close with just a few lines from the Sufi poet Hafez. Suggest a fix

56:56 He said, Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you. I love that. Okay, so the dharma has heard our name, all of our names. Suggest a fix

57:16 It's running through the streets trying to find us. So let ourselves be found. Okay, so let's just sit for a couple of minutes. Suggest a fix

57:43 Thank you for listening. To learn how you can support the teachers and Dharma Seed, please visit dharmaseed .org slash donate. Suggest a fix

Attribution and License

Talk by Joseph Goldstein, recorded at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, July 21, 2019. Original at Dharma Seed: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/57536/. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

Listen on Dharma Seed • CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License