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audiodharma:
  talks:
  - date: '2022-09-13'
    mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/16945/20220913-Ayya_Santussika-sati-avoid_all_evil_do_good_purify_the_mind_3_of_3.mp3
    speakers:
    - speaker_name: Ayya Santussika
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/192
    talk_start_time_seconds: 0
    title: Avoid All Evil, Do Good, Purify the Mind (3 of 3)
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/16945
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location_city: Redwood City, CA
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  imprecise_upload_date: '2023-05-04'
  title: Santussika Bhikkhuni - (3 of 3) Avoid All Evil, Do Good, Purify the Mind
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  uploader_str: The Sati Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSatiCenter
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# Avoid All Evil, Do Good, Purify the Mind (3 of 3) - [Ayya Santussika](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/192)

*This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.*

## [Avoid All Evil, Do Good, Purify the Mind (3 of 3)](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/16945)

All right, we'll take a look at a few suttas and start with sharing my screen and showing you this PowerPoint presentation: *Purifying the Mind*. 

I just put some words on this slide to kind of open up: what are we putting into our mind? What are we filling the mind with? And of course, this is all in the area of sensory restraint and being aware of what we take in, and then how we feel and how the mind responds.

Some of these: entertainment, news, advertising, conversations, perceptions, recurring thoughts. And you might notice what really makes your mind calm and happy, wholesome, or what really winds it up and promotes discontent, anger, resentment, etc. So, really for the moment, without all the theory or the ideas about what it means to purify the mind, to really look at what it's like in our own experience. Does anyone have any story they'd like to share or ideas around these things? Maybe questions or challenges that you find? You can raise your hand if you do.

I know for myself, it's really helpful to have a pretty active monitor on my mental state. Like if I'm taking in news, and I want to know enough about what's happening in the world, but then when the mind becomes agitated, anxious, resentful, or some other mental state, it's not like you run away from those states. But understanding what causes them and where is the clinging that turns it into an actual negative mental state, something that's debilitating, pulling us down. And then noticing that if we bring in the Dhamma and we think about the nature of things and cause and effect, we can use those same experiences and it can uplift the mind. Have you had anything like that go on in your practice? Any thoughts?

Yeah, Marilyn, did you want to say something?

"Yeah, I find that I do have a fair bit of time spent with news, advertising, all that stuff. And at the same time, questioning what's the point? Is there any real reason that we need to know what's going on in the rest of the world? Does it really matter? And I don't think it does. And yet it seems like responsible adults should know what's going on in Europe or in the States. And I'm not sure about any of that. Something tells me it's not worth the trouble, and at the same time, it seems sort of some obligation to know that stuff."

Yeah, I feel like this is a very useful area of contemplation. Like, how much do we want to know? How much is good to know? I mean, I can think of... okay, so I'm a Buddhist nun. Sometimes people are surprised when monks and nuns know anything about the world, like they expect us to be meditating all the time in our forest hermitage, which is great, by the way, to do. But I also feel like I do want to know what people are going through. I mean, if I knew nothing about what's happening in the war in Iraq or I knew nothing about what's happening with climate change, I feel like that would be unfortunate, in a sense. Because when I know something about what's going on, I feel like the kindness and compassion in the mind really can support people and the positive vibes in the world.

So, I think if we come to it from a place of Dhamma, we can also catch where the line gets crossed into listening to something that just doesn't matter, or you know enough about what's happening that you can put it down. There's nothing really to be gained by sticking with it longer.

"I guess my other part to that is that how do we really know anything? I mean, they tell us this happens, but how do we know? Because it's on the screen? But there's all kinds of contradictory information. Can you actually know anything unless you actually experience it yourself?"

Yeah, that's a good point, and it's important I think to hold that in mind: is what I'm hearing true, and how do I know? And I'm not ready to say that we can't know anything unless we experience it ourselves. I mean, surely we can hear the stories of other people's lives and relate to them because we've had similar experiences. And there are things we can know. You hear the same kind of facts from different sources that are reliable.

You know, I mean, how do we know the Dhamma? The Buddha talked about this: you listen to the teachings, and you really take them in and practice with them, and that's how you really know them. You hear teachers that people have spent time with who are reputable, and you can see their actions are in line with the Dhamma, and then you develop trust that they're telling you what the Buddha actually taught, things like that. We can use those same criteria, I think.

But these are really good points of reflection, and really looking at: what's the state of my mind after I watch this movie or listen to this program, or have conversations with certain people and the themes that they're caught up in? We may have people in our life that we find it's really draining, and yet maybe that's okay because maybe we can be of support to them. And maybe we can listen to someone's problems and not become drained because we're not getting caught up in it. Maybe that's part of practice. And we also can have people in our life where when we spend time with them, it's really uplifting. Or we can spend time with some people and we find our bad habits really coming to the fore, or we can spend time with people where we really see the best in ourselves emerge.

And it's important to reflect on these things, not to blame others for any of it—it's all happening in our own minds and our own actions—but to really consider, how is my mind affected by what I'm spending my time on and who I'm spending it with? And of course, the Buddha had a lot to say about being careful about the friends we have, and who we spend our time with, and how we spend our time.

I don't know if you know about this passage where we chant Ten Reflections, and one of them is: the days and nights are relentlessly passing; how well am I spending my time? How many of you have heard that before? Yeah, a couple of you. It's a good thought: how am I spending my time, and what is it doing to my mind?

So, I wonder if that last item on the bottom there about recurring thoughts, this is something that can help us understand. If we have thoughts that come back again and again, and I've highlighted blame and guilt here because oftentimes people have difficulties with these, and they can be quite problematic for the mind. Trying to find the root cause of that: if we have a tendency towards blame, then it's useful to consider where our agency, our own choices, kind of start and stop relative to that of others. And when people are acting unskillfully and we're subjected to that lack of skill, what does it take to protect ourselves, to withdraw, and what does it take to forgive, to let it go so that it doesn't continue to be a pollutant of the mind?

And of course, guilt is the same thing, it's just directed at ourselves. At least, I think that's the case. If you have a disagreement with me, please raise your hand, this would be fun. Complaints are always welcome! But I know for myself, when I am challenged by reflecting on some unskillful behavior of the past, one of the things that's helpful is to reflect on: you know, this is just how it is when we don't know the skillful way. And the Buddha talks about this. He talks about these contrasts: the untaught ordinary person with the noble disciple. The untaught ordinary person is one who just hasn't been exposed to the Dhamma or to the way things are, and so they don't know. The Buddha will say, well, why do people do these things? It's because they don't know. That's what it's like when you don't know.

And of course, the noble disciple is one who's been educated in the Dhamma and has been practicing it. And so, you know, if we can be forgiving of ourselves and others because we don't know, I think there's a real chance that our own mind can be at ease and content, since we're living in a world of a lot of dark and light activity, skillful and unskillful actions.

Any other thoughts or comments on any of this? I don't know if you want to share it, but I'm really interested in the sticky points where we find purification of the mind to be a challenge.

Yes, Stanley.

"I'm looking at the beginning of the top of this and the question is, 'what are we filling the mind with?' And that's implying to me that's a choice that we're making to fill the mind. And I was thinking about this last set of examples, the recurring thoughts. Very often I feel like this is the part of my daily existence where... the other ones are where I can choose to kind of close myself off, but the recurring thoughts almost feels like a counter example. I find I'm often running away from my thoughts or suppressing them, and thinking that's not what the idea behind purifying my mind is about. But there's something about the quality of this that... I'm figuring you'll be going into this, but I just wanted to put that out there that that's something that I'm wondering about."

It's a really good question, Stanley, because it does seem like it has a little bit different character, like these thoughts come unbidden. We can have patterns of thinking that got developed through experience and conditioning. But then, consider that we have choices of how we deal with them. And I think running away from our thoughts is a lot like... if we use the Four Noble Truths, particularly those first three Noble Truths, with this example the way we would with any other kind of suffering or discontent or difficult feeling, then we can look at it as: okay, there is this dukkha[^1], these thoughts. We want to push them away, we want to run away. But actually, what the Buddha says is you have to turn towards it and be present with it.

So, if we think, okay, these mental states, this is dukkha. And if I can understand why it's there, if I can understand what's going on, then I have a chance for it to kind of unravel. You can see where it comes from. You know, it might be a pattern that got developed when you were young, or someone in your life that you were learning from had this tendency, or maybe we carried it with us for lifetimes. Regardless, it's like we can start to unpack what's behind it. And then, of course, the Buddha said when you understand at least where the cause of it comes from, then we have a chance of it beginning to ease up, to cease.

And the thing that really works is to really let go of whatever the content of those thoughts might be and work with the feeling that's there with it. So you have these recurring thoughts, and notice the feeling, especially wherever it kind of shows up in your body. And if you work with the feeling by paying attention to it, being with it, you'll notice that it starts to change. And when we do that frequently enough, where we're not pushing it away and we're not indulging in it—I might say like you're really getting in deeper into it and fueling it—if we don't do either of those things, then it starts to lose its power. And it can be a pretty strong habit, some of these mental activities, but we can gradually wear them away.

Now, it also requires the Noble Eightfold Path. So if we're also working on our actions, developing our moral virtue, working on our speech, working on developing kindness and compassion and the other Brahmavihāras[^2] as well, then we're reconditioning the mind. And all of these factors working together: meditation, reflection on Dhamma... so the sīla[^3], samādhi[^4], and paññā[^5], developing the Brahmavihāras, all of those things together start to really change the mind.

And I'm really reminded, there's a friend staying here right now who's been spending a lot of time in a monastery, and she's talking about how much of an impact it's had on her mind. You know, to be around people who are immersed in the Dhamma and really treating each other with the kind of attitudes that are most prevalent in that kind of an environment. And all of that spiritual practice, all of the meditation and reflection on Dhamma, that it really has an effect on the mind.

So, the more we can fill the mind with those kinds of things, the more opportunity we have. It's like you have a sponge and you put it in a liquid, what's the liquid got in it? If it's pure water, there's going to be purity in that sponge. If you put it into oil, you're going to have something else. And this is the way we want to think about our own minds: let's soak it in something good. And even though it comes with all these patterns from the past, we can gradually let that unfold or unpack or soak out. Good thoughts. Thank you, Stanley.

## Tools for Purification

I'm going to move to the next slide: Tools for purification. You know those things I just mentioned: going deeper into the Dhamma and meditation and reflection. And then we've got some suttas here. I'm going to start with this one in the middle, in the Numerical Discourses, in the Book of Fours (AN 4).

So, here we have this sutta. It talks about some different aspects of purifying the mind. At one time Venerable Ānanda was staying with the Koliyans at a town called Sāpūga. I'm not going to read every word here, but I'm going to go to the second paragraph, and he says: "These four factors of trying to be pure have been explained by the Buddha, who knows and sees, is perfected and fully awakened. And they are in order to purify sentient beings, and to get past sorrow and crying, to make an end of pain and sadness, to end this cycle of suffering, and to realize Nibbāna. And what are the four factors of trying to be pure? In ethics, mind, view, and freedom."

So we can think about all of these as, you know, what is the effect on our life and on our mind? So, what does it mean to be pure in ethics? It's when one is ethical, restrained in the code of conduct. So he's talking about monastics here, but of course we all have a code of conduct, the five precepts, and other things attendant to that. Conducting ourselves well, and here it says, "seeking alms in suitable places" — so seeking our livelihood in a suitable way. "Seeing danger in the slightest fault, keeping the principles we've undertaken."

So whether we're monastics or we're lay practitioners, it's useful to look at: am I really living according to my values? The things that I say are important, am I really putting time and attention into that? And this is one of the ways we can really purify the mind. Even though we're talking about conduct here, it all starts with the mind. And when we purify our conduct, it actually has a positive effect on the mind. And certainly, when we're following our hatred and delusion in our actions, it has a very negative effect on our mind. So these are all things that really support the purification of mind.

"I will fulfill such purity of ethics." If you see that you're doing something that's not in alignment with your values, then you decide to align your actions with your values. And if you see that your actions are in alignment with your values, then you can live peacefully and happily. This part says: "I will fulfill such purity of ethics, or if it's already fulfilled, I'll support it in every situation by wisdom." So, bringing in the Dhamma and using that purification everywhere in our life. "Their enthusiasm for that, their effort, zeal, vigor, perseverance, mindfulness, and situational awareness (or clear comprehension) is called a factor of trying to be pure in ethics."

And it goes on to talk about being pure in mind. So this is where the practitioner is using meditation to purify the mind. It's listing the first, second, third, and fourth absorption or jhāna[^6], but any degree of samādhi or lucid calm has a positive effect on purifying the mind. It doesn't get rid of our underlying tendencies, but it helps. And then we use it as a basis for working with those tendencies and habits, the defilements that are there.

And then he talks about purity of view. And this is of course another aspect of what we're doing with the mind here. One who truly understands: "This is suffering (or this is dukkha). This is the origin of dukkha. This is the cessation of dukkha. This is the practice that leads to the cessation of dukkha." So it's the Four Noble Truths. And, just like we talked about before, these thoughts that kind of assail us that we don't want, or any other form of discomfort or dukkha, or desire or hatred or any of those things that cause and represent or express suffering, then this is the time to apply the Noble Truths.

I don't know how many of you really have a method for experiencing the first three Noble Truths. You know, we talk about the Noble Eightfold Path. Obviously it's a path of practice; we kind of know what to do with that. But a lot of times, we don't have much of a sense of how do we work with "this is dukkha," that first Noble Truth. And it's about turning towards it and being present with it. Like I said before, not indulging in the feeling or experience, and also not pushing it away. When you see it for what it really is—you know, like when we're caught up in anger, how often do we stop and say, "Hey, this is dukkha, what am I doing?" focusing on how much we dislike something.

To really understand, what is it that I want to be different than it is? Irritation, it always comes back to the same kind of thing. See if you can develop, if you haven't already, a method, or finding one that really works for you. When you're suffering, how do I sit down and be with that in a way that I can endure or wait, or provide the conditions where that can begin to unravel and dissipate? I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, Marilyn, did you want to say something?

"Is that kind of like asking yourself, 'what am I clinging to? What is it that I'm clinging to here that's annoying me?' Is that the same kind of thing?"

It's part of it. You can ask, "what am I clinging to?" My good friend that I live with, Ayya Citananda, likes to play the game "Where's the clinging?" Because there's always some clinging. And also another good way to do it is, "Where is my identification with this? I'm identifying with this, I think it's me or mine." And there's always suffering involved.

"It seems to me that's what I cling to... myself! Like almost every time it turns out, it takes a little while to figure it out."

But you know, I thought there's another one: "Where's the goodwill?" That doesn't quite work with the three Noble Truths. Well, it's the flip side, right? Maybe that question can be: "Where's the goodwill?" to find the uplifting factor in the situation, or maybe it can be like, "Why is that so absent in my mind right now?" Yeah, what's missing.

I think sometimes too, we just look at each other and say, you know, things are really not the way we want them to be. We want things to be different than they are. We don't want Putin to invade; it's not nice. We wanted the world to be different.

Yes, and that's one of the main things to come to grips with, is that the world is never going to be different, because there's greed, hatred, and delusion here. Until that's gone, we can't keep having this nonsense and this misery. It's just how it is. So it's not like we don't do things to try to correct the wrongs that we see in our lives and in our world, we do what we can. Also, it's very important to just recognize: this is saṃsāra. It's got dukkha involved. There's the bright and the light, there's happiness, and there's suffering.

And when we can recognize that as a reality, it helps us to calm down and also be circumspect. Like, how do I want to spend my time, live my life? How do I want to train my mind so that it can be happy and free regardless of the conditions? And that's really what the Buddha taught: the end of suffering. But you don't get the end of suffering without understanding suffering. So he taught suffering, and he says, "I only teach one thing: suffering and the end of suffering." Sounds like two things, doesn't it? But actually, it's one thing, because you have to know that suffering before the end can come. And because it doesn't come from the world just lining up and behaving the way we want it to. Never going to happen. We get a little of that here and there, but that doesn't last.

## Clear Comprehension

So, there's a question in the chat about: what is situational awareness or clear comprehension?

So almost much of the time when you see mindfulness referred to, the Buddha would also include sampajañña[^7], which is clear comprehension. Sometimes translated as clear comprehension or situational awareness, like you're aware of... it's not just that you're mindful, you've got a handle on what is this about. You're clear about how the Dhamma applies. You're clear about what's going on in the situation.

Sometimes you'll hear stories—I mean, people can mindfully rob a bank or mindfully watch something awful happen and not do anything. The situational awareness, the clear comprehension, is you have an understanding of the potential results. You have an understanding of where does this fit in what's wholesome and unwholesome. In the commentary, there's a list of four different things that you have awareness of. You don't even have to go into that, you just know for yourself. It's not enough just to be mindful. I can be mindful of driving through a red light! It's not enough. You've got to have wisdom going along with it, and that's what that's about.

Okay, so let's talk about this last one: trying to be pure in freedom. "The noble disciple who has these factors of trying to be pure in ethics, mind, and view, detaches their mind from things that arouse greed and frees their mind from things that it should be freed from." Well, that's a catch-all! Which is: free it from what it should be freed from! "Doing so, they experience perfect freedom. This is called purity of freedom. And they think, 'I will fulfill such purity of freedom, and if it's already fulfilled, I'll support it in every situation by wisdom.'"

So it's like, what should your mind be freed from? And when we really are using wisdom as we reflect on that, then we see that the problem is not from outside of us. It's not like, "I need to be freed of this boss that's making me so irritable," or whatever. It's being freed from the tendency to be irritable. All those same things we've been talking about. I want it to be different than it is.

## Rapture and Meditation

Kind of look at this next one here about rapture. So, one of the ways that we purify the mind is by spending time in meditation and developing those beautiful mental states. And the Buddha talks about what's happening when you have these beautiful mental states. Rapture is a translation for the word pīti[^8]. At least I'm pretty sure that's what this... I didn't look at the Pali, but that's probably what it is. Yeah, it's the Pīti Sutta, so clearly it's pīti.

And it says here that the householder Anāthapiṇḍika[^9]... Anāthapiṇḍika, if you haven't heard of him, was one of the great supporters of the Buddha. He wasn't just a great supporter of the Buddha, his name actually means "one who gives food." He would feed the hungry and just do lots and lots of humanitarian things. And he was escorted by about 500 lay followers, so he was a popular guy! And he came to the Buddha and bowed and sat down to one side.

And the Buddha said, "You have supplied the mendicant Sangha with robes, alms food, lodgings, and medicines and supplies for the sick." So you've been giving the monastics requisites. "But you should not be content with just this much. You should train yourself like this: 'How can I from time to time enter and dwell in the rapture of seclusion?'" So how can I from time to time drop into meditation and feel those feelings of joy that arise in the body and the mind?

And when he said this, Venerable Sāriputta, the Buddha's right-hand man, said, "It's incredible! It's amazing how well this was said by the Buddha!" And he repeats it. You know, you've been providing these wonderful things for the monastics, but you should train yourself to enter and dwell in the rapture of seclusion. When you're turning your attention away from everything else, that kind of seclusion, and you're feeling that beautiful spiritual energy.

"At a time when the noble disciple enters and dwells in the rapture of seclusion, five things are not present: the pain and sadness connected with sensual pleasures." So you've shut off the news and you're sitting in meditation and you're letting go of all the gunk from the day, and you're really just bringing yourself into that beautiful state of pīti. Letting that arise. You know how that arises? I hope it's more about relaxing and letting go than it is about trying to—you can't really make it happen. To become still, tranquil.

So when that's happening, we aren't experiencing the pain and sadness of sensual pleasures. We're not engaged in sensual pleasures. And we're also not experiencing the pleasure and happiness connected with sensual pleasures either. And he says something else that's not there is the pain and sadness connected with what's unskillful, but also the pleasure and happiness connected with what's unskillful. Do you have pleasure and happiness connected with the unskillful? Yeah, honesty comes out, I can see it in the heads shaking. Of course we do! There can be unskillful things, and we still enjoy it to some extent, otherwise we wouldn't keep doing it. And he also says you don't have the pain and sadness connected with the skillful. There is pain and sadness sometimes connected with the skillful. It says none of these are happening when you're dwelling in that kind of beautiful mental state of spiritual energy.

And then the Buddha agrees. So how does that help us? Do you get a sense of that? What's your experience of the benefits of meditation?

Yes, Marie?

"Meditation clears my brain. And I don't necessarily notice on a day-to-day basis, but when I've had the luxury of going on a retreat, and then when I come home for a number of weeks, there's not quite the rattling that was in my head. It's almost as if a different habit establishes itself. So that all the mental grabbing that I do on a daily basis and the reaction... if I'm not stimulated and I'm just there, I don't exacerbate those sorts of behaviors. And it's like, oh, it's so surprising when it lasts."

Yeah, that's nice. You know, another thing that I think happens, and you probably have experienced this, but maybe we don't always relate it to meditation. When we teach people meditation, like from the beginning, their first exposure to it, and you teach them how to do it and they start to practice, we really encourage people to practice every day. That it's more powerful, has better effects, than just on the weekend or something. If they start practicing, then we tell them: don't look for the results for a while. Don't even think about what the results might be. Check in on it in a couple of months, or even six months. And you don't check in on it around, "how still can my mind stay when I'm meditating?" You look at how your life has changed. Because your life changes, and our reactions to things are different. And people really see a difference in their lives.

And my hope is that—I mean, retreats are great, and it's really useful. And if people can keep it going... maybe you need an infusion again after a while, but to keep that daily practice up is so helpful. And there are a lot of different ways we can practice. The Buddha gave so many different methods because we have different situations that come up in our life and people are different.

## Stream Entry

Okay, I'm going to go back to the PowerPoint for a second. This one's about stream entry. So, this is one of the things that happens as we purify the mind. This is the first level, you might say, of the four stages or levels of enlightenment. And I want to take a look at a couple of suttas. So there are two parts to this: one is the practice for stream entry, the things that we do in order to purify the mind, condition the mind for this level of awakening to occur. And those factors are: associating with good people, listening to the true teachings, paying proper attention to those teachings, and practicing them in line with what the teaching is.

Let's take a quick look at the sutta: Associating with good people, listening to the true teaching, proper attention, practicing in line with the teaching.

And then Sāriputta is asked: "What is this stream you're entering?" And he says, "It's the Noble Eightfold Path." And what is a stream-enterer? "Anyone who possesses the Noble Eightfold Path." So there's more to it than that. We get to here, the culmination of the spiritual life. "The culmination of the spiritual life, mendicants: a noble disciple who has four things is a stream-enterer, not liable to be reborn in the underworld, bound for awakening. What four? It's when a noble disciple has experiential confidence in the Buddha."

So we've really developed that—not just an idea, not a commitment, it's an experience of the truth of the Buddha's awakening, of the awakened mind. Sometimes people get stuck on it being the historical Buddha and that doesn't work for them. But it's Buddha as awake, and that the awakening is possible, that it happened, and continues to happen. The Dhamma, the Sangha, the enlightened Sangha—that is where it continues to happen, lay or monastic.

"And they have the ethical conduct loved by the noble ones, leading to immersion." So, meditation, samādhi. The noble disciple has these four things, that when they have these four things, they're a stream-enterer. And then he has this verse: "Those who have faith and ethics, confidence and vision of the truth, in time arrive at happiness, the culmination of the spiritual life."

So are there any questions or comments or thoughts or experiences around these four? Either the four that bring about stream entry, or the four things that are included in the experience of stream entry? Have you thought much about this? It's really a beautiful thing. And that confidence brings a kind of stability into one's life that we don't lose.

Yeah, Marilyn?

"I mean, I think it's a wonderful thing and all, but I think sometimes people get mixed up competing for it. Like, who's got it, who doesn't have it, and do I have it, and will I get it? And it becomes like some kind of hurdle or contest or something. It seems to me, it's going to happen or it's not. You do the best you can. It almost seems silly to me, because isn't it sort of a conceit to think, 'oh, I'm a stream-enterer?'"

Well, there's no way you're a stream-enterer if you're thinking like that! But that's exactly what we've been talking about, right? So if it's coming from this sense of ego, yeah, it's not it. And what we need in our practice is to be so incredibly honest about what we're doing. So as soon as we're caught up in, "I'm this" or "I'm that," or "I've got this and they don't have that," we're going in the wrong way. And if we really want to wake up, if we really want to be free from suffering, we gotta watch ourselves and admit when that's happening. And then know, "no, it's the wrong way." As soon as this becomes a personal goal, a personal attainment, that's not what it is. We're far from it when we're doing that.

So this is important to notice, and sometimes it's easier to notice when other people are doing these things, but then we gotta turn it around and look at ourselves. Am I doing that? Is there some way that I'm doing that? Because we want to purify the mind, uproot these tendencies. It's so deep in every one of us to see things from this position of personal identity. But when stream entry actually happens, that falls away, at least to a large degree. We know that this body and mind is not a self.

Thanks, Marilyn. It's true all of what you said. It's like, no, if we're going down that road, we're missing it, and we need to turn around and get ourselves straight. So thank you.

## The Effacement Sutta

"I have a question about the last sutta, if that's okay. It seemed to say that the jhānas would not get rid of some of the bad things. And then this one is saying, you know, you need to act ethically. And this one is saying, okay, you've acted ethically, but meditate. So it's kind of like a riddle, or a 'do both' type of thing going on."

Yes! And this is exactly why we have to have that clear comprehension, to that wisdom of knowing what we're doing with things. So in the Effacement Sutta, the Buddha is pointing out that if we are having these wonderful mental states, that's not enough to rub away the defilements. Nothing wrong with having those wonderful mental states; the meditation is good, and the Buddha encourages us to meditate again and again and again. Just don't neglect meditation, you're going to be sorry later, he says!

But if we think, "Oh, because I have these jhānas, these beautiful mental states, that I've gotten rid of my defilements"... because you hear a lot of stories like that. Like some monk has gone to practice in the forest, and they start feeling they're having such great meditation and they're feeling like, "Hey, I must be an arahant!" I've heard this a few times. And then they go back to their monastic community, and within an hour and a half they're angry with someone! So you haven't uprooted the defilements. And that's what he was trying to say. We really do when that anger arises, and we really do have to work with it.

That's the Effacement Sutta. It's a beautiful sutta. If you haven't looked at it, it's in the Middle Length Discourses (MN 8). It's an incredibly beautiful sutta. The Buddha takes us through five iterations, or levels of working with our defilements until they are gone. And it's really beautiful. So yeah, we need to meditate. Those beautiful calm meditation experiences help us, but it's not the whole answer. And you can have really excellent samādhi, people can even be very powerful in the use of energy, but they may not have conquered their defilements. And so you gotta do it all: the whole Noble Eightfold Path. Yeah, thank you.

## Conclusion and Reflection

Let's see what else we have here. Oh, these are some questions for you. I have no idea what time it is—oh, it's time to end! So I want you to take these home—or you are home, so you can just write them down or whatever. I don't know if you picked up a practice last month for cultivating goodness, but you could think about what you do in your life to cultivate the good, and how that affects your purity of mind. Doing service, purifying your ethics, your sīla, etc., and just what does that do to my mind?

And what activities in your life support an increase in wholesome mental states, and a decrease in unwholesome mental states? So we're taking the right effort, the positive side, bright effort here, increasing or sustaining wholesome mental states and decreasing the unwholesome. Officially it's all right effort, isn't it? All four. So just food for thought as you keep going in your practice.

So I thank you all for being here and for your practice and your attention. I hope you find something useful in this experience this evening. It's probably better than watching the news. Okay! [Laughter]

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[^1]: **Dukkha:** A Pali word often translated as "suffering," "stress," or "unsatisfactoriness."
[^2]: **Brahmavihāra:** The four "divine abodes" or sublime attitudes in Buddhism: loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), empathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā).
[^3]: **Sīla:** Ethical conduct or morality.
[^4]: **Samādhi:** A state of deep, focused meditation, concentration, or immersion.
[^5]: **Paññā:** Wisdom, insight, or discerning knowledge.
[^6]: **Jhāna:** Deep states of meditative absorption or profound stillness.
[^7]: **Sampajañña:** A Pali term typically translated as "clear comprehension" or "situational awareness," often paired with mindfulness.
[^8]: **Pīti:** A Pali word typically translated as "rapture," "joy," or "delight" that arises during meditation.
[^9]: **Anāthapiṇḍika:** A wealthy merchant and the chief male lay disciple of the Buddha, known for his extreme generosity.