The Unconditioned | VAjahn Sumedho | 22 September 2005 – Porto

Well, then we only have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the Retreat is over.

Let us then reflect on the outcome of the retreat so far, not in terms of “good” or “bad”. Sometimes people say, “I had a bad retreat” or “a good retreat”. But bad retreat is also good and if there were only good retreats you would never learn anything (smile).

Religious conventions have their forms and these are precisely conventions. So for example, questions about Buddhists not believing in God and things like that (smiles), here in this case you're mixing conventions. Just like different languages, they're just conventions. And the word ‘God’, what does that mean? It often happens that the word ‘God’ is used as if all people agree in the same way on what they think. What is meant in the Christian context or in the Jewish context? “God” is the word used. But in the Buddhist context for example it is spoken of teaching gods and men, it is not to teach God and men … gods in this case does not equate to God in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore, these are all words that proceed in ways where there is a concord when speaking or reporting in terms of “spiritual development”, and so when we mix everything (religions, beliefs), confusion is created. Therefore, when teaching within the Buddhist context, one tries to stay close to the use of Buddhist terminologies, how to know how to use the Buddhist context.

This is not a Retreat about comparison of religions (smiling), but about meditation and how to use the Buddhist convention.

It is interesting to see, as in Buddhism, the Buddha, whether he believed in “God” or not, this was never the kind of approach he took to the spiritual life, but he did, almost in the opposite direction and this is what the “Four Noble Truths” highlight. And these are not metaphysical truths, it is not a question of trying to define ‘ultimate reality’ or even of using terms for factors other than negative ones such as ‘Unconditional’, ‘Uncreated’, ‘Cessation’, ‘Nibbāna’ (Nirvāna).

Theistic religions, on the other hand, tend to start much more with metaphysical doctrines, “I believe in God”…but this in Buddhism amounts to, at least in the Theravada Tradition, “suffering exists”, “its cause exists”, “its cessation exists” and “the path to the cessation of suffering exists”. That is, it is almost the reverse, it takes the reverse sense of conduct in opposition to theistic religion. Now the “First Noble Truth” is based on a fairly common experience and is certainly not a metaphysical truth, it is an existential reality, is it not? Suffering is an experience common to all human beings, all sentient beings. And putting this within the context of a “Noble Truth”, what nobility can one find about suffering? It seems to me an evil fact, in terms of my American mind (smiles)…o that I want to run away from it, how do we get rid of it? How do we get out of suffering? So this approach of the Buddha is precisely to understand suffering as we create it. So in giving a talk, I'm constantly pointing out the way things are, this existential experience of sitting, breathing, feeling, being in this sensitive way. I've been in a human body, I've been conscientious …eu I'm not trying to say what you should think about this, but pointing you out and encouraging you to wake up and observe, to realize. This is mindfulness, waking up to the reality of this moment as it is, which includes happiness, suffering or whatever you are experiencing right now.

The emphasis given to all conditional phenomenology is impermanent. And the ‘unconditional’, the ‘uncreated’, the ‘non-born’, the ‘non-originate’ exists, so there is also the exit from the ‘conditioned’, the ‘created’, the ‘born’, the ‘originate’.

That is, this whole way of teaching, of indicating, of speaking, is not to believe, I am not asking you to believe in anything, but to observe the conditions … the way it is (as things are), consciously experiencing within the human form, within your … form within the way your mind works, the emotions you are having, the energies, the energetic experiences you may be experiencing now. And it is not to judge whether it is good or bad but to be what is …this way, this being what it is, just as it is. The Buddha after his Enlightenment always referred to himself as the “Tathāgata”, “Tathāta”, this word “tathā” in Pāli means “the integrity of what is” or “that which is”, the “as is”. He did not refer to Himself and said “I used to be Prince Siddhārtta and my Father was a King, my Mother was a Queen and I attended the best schools (smiling) …e married, had a son and left them when I chose to be an ascetic for six years and found myself in the futility of mistreating myself and sat under a tree and became enlightened” (ri). What is now, ‘tathāta’, ‘tathāgata’ is ‘so becomes One who is now’, it is as a reference, that which is present. He is not Prince Siddhārta, he is not the ascetic Gautama, he is not even the Buddha, in the sense of saying "I am the Buddha" in an act of proclaiming himself at that level. Now let us pay attention here to the erudition of language, ‘Tathāgata’ has often become, in various Buddhist traditions, a sort of superlative title, when in reality it means ‘what it is precisely now’. So this “tathāta”, “tathā” and “tathāgata” or anything with that prefix, is translated as “the quality such as is now”, it is not a person, it is not someone with a story, a past, with an autobiography, credentials, status, success or whatever it is, but who is what it is “now”.

And I've always found this perspective quite interesting, because it implies learning the true meaning of language. Because I lived in Thailand during my early stages of meditation, so I had to learn meditation through terms in Tai Language, Tai-English translations and Pāli…e then, it is clear that the Thai Language is a Language that has developed culturally under the influence and contact with Buddhism, including in itself enough words from Pāli, such as English with Latin that includes enough words. And then learning another language, I found it a great revelation, because in our own language one can take it for granted and think that one really perceives whatever it is. English is my native language, it's American English, but it's a habit-Language that you just learn …is the kind of absorbing when you hear in childhood, when you're a baby and your Mother talks or someone else. So learning meditation in another language like Thai, I found it a great revelation, because in a way I couldn't understand it, because it wasn't my native language. I had to consider the meaning to which it indicated, what is the meaning of the words. And at first, Thai is a very psychic language, there is a whole range of terms about “Citta” (mind-heart) and “Jay” (win-win), different levels of happiness and misery, envelopment or depression, endless types of combinations to describe emotional feelings, mental states. And also, to translate that into English and learn how to use the English language the way it really works, not only in terms of grammatical expression or language structure, but psychically, how words actually have an effect, how they actually affect consciousness, because consciousness is the foundation of Being. This is consciousness, language, words, concepts, selves. As for example say "I"…sonly this pronoun, personal pronoun "I"…and then we have "I" and "mine". It is clear that "I" does not necessarily imply selfishness when it points to the reality of Being, but when I enter into strong views and opinions, selfishness and obsession, when I become obsessed with the "I", I am obsessed with myself, with my being, with what is my…then these words "I" and "mine" are extremely powerful to reflect on them, because they lead to this sense of personal importance, of what I think, that these are my thoughts, this is my life, my rights…this is the era of rights, demanding my rights.

And then “I” can easily lead to this feeling of “personal individuality”. But "I" may also mean "non-personal" …not a separate personal "I" in terms of someone with a story, a body or something like that, but more to indicate the reality of being present. “I am” is an honest statement…if we are to express ourselves at this moment in words, it will be with “I am”. And I refer to this in the Legend of the Buddha, after the Enlightenment, when He goes to Varanasi and meets the ascetic who asks Him, "Do you seem so particularly resplendent and radiant …o that you have just discovered it?" And he simply answers, "I am He perfectly enlightened," … and I used to wonder about this and say, "If He was enlightened, how could He say such a thing?" Honestly I think it's something perfectly stupid to say if you ask me …. Imagine, someone asks you and you answer "I'm the perfectly enlightened one" … whoever said that I wouldn't trust. I have already met people here in Amarāvati of whom one proclaimed himself God. But actually the Buddha said what he said, at least in the scripture, I don't know to what extent the story is reliable, but it's a good story and the ascetic left and didn't believe it. So was the Buddha telling a lie, or was it just presumption? Or was it the non-personal "I"? So this is just a reflection on the use of this pronoun. Does “I” always refer to me as a person? Or is it rather a testimony of reality? ‘I am the enlightened one’, ‘I am the way’, ‘I am …’… and of course, for many of us it looks like the ego, because that is usually how the word, the pronoun ‘I’, is used. And of course, if one feels one's ego involved, then will it interpret itself as a kind of personal goal to be achieved, becoming … personality or won't it be?

For example, in Advaita (Vedānta), they use ‘I Am’ as ‘who am I’ or they use reflection on ‘I Am’ wisely. And then the Buddhists say 'oh, in Advaita they have the upper 'I' and the lower 'I' and the 'Atman' and it's all crap, we Buddhists are right…'. But do we really know what we are saying? . . . do we really understand our own convention? Because we have biased prejudices and judgments about other religions, about other conventions that we ourselves do not know or understand … that we do not even practice them to perceive them, we simply judge them from the point of view of our own convention. It is like the presumption of being English, isn't it?. where one thinks with presumption that the British Colonial Empire taught people to be civilized, because our civilization had much more breeze than any other, when in reality it didn't understand anyone… and that is to be the "I" and "mine" that are convinced, where there is biased prejudice and harm that comes from ignorance.

And so, pointing to consciousness, whatever our race, religion, class or whatever it is, we are actually beings of consciousness, that is consciousness. And language is something we learn and use in consciousness. And in this Retreat what I point to is not for convention as something that you have to master, but rather for how to use the convention of Theravada Buddhism. Therefore, it is not to create more presumption, it is not to add more presumption to what we may already have. It is to use this precisely to see and penetrate through presumption, through ignorance, prejudice or attachment that we may have, to go further, to see the suffering that we experience, that I experience when I am clinging to ideas, opinions, positions, feeling of self-importance, any concept, thoughts or attitudes that I may have or even not yet be aware of, until I begin to observe and reflect on what I really am thinking and feeling. I used to be convinced that I wasn't convinced…someone talks about presumption and says that someone is very convinced and I can't stand presumptuous people…e when I started noticing how I used to judge other people as convinced, I noticed how well I was being convinced (ri), even saying "I'm not like that".

Therefore, the "I Am", as I have already indicated, if I put it on the personal level "I am Ajahn Sumedho", then it ceases to be universal and becomes personal… "I am American-British"… if I put it in universal terms one can say "I am … Love". What's that gonna be? Now here we enter the use of the English word "Love" and of course, as you well know, this word is used almost for anything and everything nowadays (ri)… but it is a very powerful word in the English language, and it made its way to almost every Language on the planet by this time. Therefore, it cannot simply be set aside. But when we talk about "Love" or romantic love, or personal love, unconditional love, … Christian love, what do we mean by this word? So the Buddhists use “Metta” and everything is soon resolved is not true (laughs). Letters are written which do not say “Love” but “Metta”. Indeed, “Love” can sound incredibly personal, as for example in “being in love” with a certain affectivity and personal intimacy. Or can it mean “Metta” (Loving/Kindness), or do we use the term “Unconditional Love”…or is that just another kind of idea or great ideal? Wouldn't it be so good to have unconditional love? … this sounds beautiful and it's inspiring… but "love" often in the way it's used simply means liking it. So like and dislike, which often means “I love this place or this person”, but when that person does not do what we want we no longer like them (smile). Then you get very confused because you want to love someone unconditionally, but then you often don't like what that person is doing, so you get confused (laughs openly)… because when you think that person is doing something you don't like, you don't feel like it, do you? Because memory or perception is “he failed me” or “he betrayed me” or “disappointed me”… i.e. the feeling of “I”, “like” or “dislike”. So when I use the term “unconditional love”, what will be the reality of unconditional love at this very moment? And then here the mind stops, isn't it?. “what is unconditional love right now?” Is … real or is it just a higher idea?.. am I feeling unconditional love right now or not?.. what is it now? If it is unconditional it is timeless, it does not depend on conditions, it does not depend on empathy, on being sympathetic or kind … of concord, or approval or anything else. On a personal level I like certain things more than others and I don't like so many others … approve of certain factions, disapprove of so many others. They are preferences, opinions and different points of view according to the way I am conditioned to think, the way I expect and demand life for myself.

Therefore, in my own experience of using the word ‘Love’, I do not define it or think too much towards endless descriptions of ‘Unconditional Love’, but simply acknowledge the reality that it is. My experience about this, which I've told some of you before, about being very angry with someone, a few years ago, very hurt, very angry, very upset … so whenever this person came into my consciousness, I felt this anger, this aversion… and then I started to observe this that became extremely terrible and suffocating, when I didn't really want to feel it … but that's what was going on (smile). And then I started writing my aversion. I remember sitting there for an entire afternoon writing down everything that came to mind, like never before … statements of the worst, I didn't even try to be kind or politically correct, or decent, or anything else, I just wrote down all the hate, without precedent. And finally when I finished, I filled three pages, which I burned and shoved down the sanita (laughs).

But the significance of this critical discourse of anger in three pages was that I brought to the surface the image of this person's memory, and after that nothing remained. Even in my most vivid imagination, there was nothing left to think of as sordid or horrible about that person (ri). Therefore, the mind was simply empty. Then I brought the image of this person back to the memory and asked, what does this emptiness have to say?.. and the emptiness said “I love you” to that person, to the memory of that person. This to me was a very important revelation because, in reality, what lies underneath, even this anger and anger, is Love. But we don't know this when we are involved in the details and within the anger itself. If we just try to stop this, this rabid … involvement because in reality, we want to be kind with love and sympathy and we can be sensible and understand other people very well. I can even put myself in their shoes and understand why they say terrible things and everything, but I'm still being right on the level of reason, but on the emotional level, however, either I let myself get caught up in it just by thinking, wandering, hating and wrapping myself in emotion or I do it by not getting involved and stop it. By reflecting in this way and even having written it out, not only as a mental tendency without actually accepting or facing it, I brought it to the surface and faced this fury and anger. And in writing, I was able to at least bring the emotion to a higher level of evidence, to a critical exposition that really allowed me to know and accept what I was thinking, and to feel as best I could in order to describe the anger, anger and hurt I was experiencing …but it came to an end … after a while there was nothing left to say … and then there was an achievement, “unconditional love underlies everything”. But we don't realize it, because we are lost in our attachments, in our habits, views and opinions, in our … illusions in our personalities.

Therefore, if you do not know what your personality is or if you do not truly know what emotions are, you will simply judge on a rational level, “anger is bad and this is love, it is good and I like”, then you believe in tastes “this is a good monk, that is a bad monk” and various preferences arise and disappear, and meanwhile someone whom we like today, tomorrow we may no longer like (ri). Liking is something you can't trust (smile). And then I became aware that there are always conditions to like… and when, for example, we see mothers with children and children are being really stubborn, difficult, abominable and impossible and, you can see that the child is being completely unbearable at that moment (ri)… but nevertheless the mothers do not say "I hate the child", at least most… and underneath all this, frustration, not like, saturation… is this unconditional Love. So this for me, it wasn't romantic love, it wasn't sentimental. In this sense unconditional love accepts everything… perceive, without conditions. It is not like “I love you only when you behave well, or if you behave decently and do not humiliate or shame your family” (ri). “but when you do things I don’t like, I don’t love you anymore”. But it is possible to think in this way “I no longer love those who talk badly about me, who spread rumours, who slander me in bad faith, who mistreat me…” and then “I no longer love you.” Or other conditions to dislike, are for example situations in which they insult me and that are abusing me… I can not like these people at that moment. But if I recognize and am aware that even underneath my tastes and antipathies that arise and fade according to conditions, is this Unconditional Love, one can cultivate the practice of Metta (kindness-kindness) or Unconditional Love. When we practice Metta with ourselves and go to others, can we become somewhat too sentimental or spoiled, I admit, some forms of behavior can become unsatisfactory to mim…mas and if it is just a kind of verbal sympathy and sentimental pretentiousness? So, and this is where you ask yourself, after all, what is Metta really? When we really investigate the use of Metta, it's actually accepting all the … conditions as they are, without liking or ceasing to like … has nothing to do with approving or disapproving. Thus we emit Love to the Lord of death, to the Demons, as well as to the Angels, the good and the bad. It's not a matter of more Love for the Angels and just a little bit for the Demons (smile), or a matter of percentage or who deserves it. Who deserves my Love?..obviously, the Demons, I'm going to be decent with them and maybe give them 1%” (ri)…and this is not unconditional, or is it? It is simply to be sentimental…e is to enter once again into that mode “you deserve more than that person” and then one enters into ways of seeing personal, opinions, tastes and preferences out there. Therefore, Unconditional Love is this ability to accept and this is to do during meditation itself, in the now, when you are mindful and experiencing unpleasant emotions…try to simply cultivate this ability to accept sensation, this feeling…this anger or resentment, or jealousy or fear…whatever it is, without conditions. It's not even a matter of accepting or getting rid of … but to allow any condition whatsoever, to be what … is, to simply apply that to yourself, to your own experience as you sit here, when you are likely to have to deal with negativity, anger and things that you may not like at all, that you may be coming up with and that you may be experiencing and personally dislike.

Therefore, in meditation, and in a Retreat like these, it is that we have this opportunity to allow fear, because fear is often an emotion that we simply reject or resist. So often we experience a lot of fear in a place like this, which is actually quite safe. There is nothing to be afraid of here, but there is terror, fear, resentment, and all kinds of strange, negative states that can arise in consciousness. Therefore, we can cultivate this attitude of unconditional Love, or Metta, or Mindfulness. Full Attention (Sati – Mindfulness) is to allow whatever is, to be what is … to be the quality of what is …se is stupid or meaningless, dirty, or wicked, or whatever is. You may want to describe it, but if you do you are making the situation more than it really is because you are judging in a certain way. It is what it is, the condition begins and ends. And this is not dismissing or ignoring quality, but neither is indulgence in quality judgment. “Conscious Presence” (Awareness) gives permission, insight, allows you to receive something. But the tendency to judge quality comes once again from the critical mind, “this is bad, this is good, this is right, this is wrong”.

So I think this way of thinking is actually a purification. Because in fact, when you can do this, even if what comes to consciousness may seem contaminated and impure, you are actually allowing it to release, allowing it to leave. These miserable states are being liberated. Through consciousness what do they do?..they stop, they go away. If one does not do this then one tends to suppress them again, or it is terrible and resists, being constantly not allowing this purification, this natural purity, because one is so in control, trying to control and reject what one does not like and what one does not want to see, what one does not want to know and what one is afraid of, that one suppresses.

Therefore, this is where the references to the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha are found. Why do I value this, why do I take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha? Because this …this is a form and a convention, but for me, because I developed it, this is a reference, a memory. These three sentences: Buddham Saragnam Gachami (I take refuge in the Buddha); Dhammam Saragnam Gachami (I take refuge in the Dhamma); Sangham Saragnam Gachami (I take refuge in the Sangha), they simply remind me even of what I may be experiencing, of the horrible, evil or frightening, mad, mad, or whatever quality …mas my refuge may be, is seeing this in terms of what is Samskāra (mental formation), arising and ending. To see the cessation of this is not to reject it, but to allow it to be so and then to carry out the cessation. Because in this "Conscious Presence", then you are in fact observing … no longer if you are the person possessing the condition, you are Buddho, the Buddha observing and knowing the Dhamma, everything that is subject to suggest and everything that is subject to end.

Now, when something ends, what really happens is to let go of something, not to reject that something. Rejection always implies aversion, 'I don't want this' and there is aversion… and we never free ourselves by rejecting anything, simply suppressing and the more we suppress, the more these angers and fears fulminate us from the inside, cut, completely corrode us… eats our liver and spleen (ri). So it's like keeping these demons inside of you and then asking why you're miserable. What you have to do is open the door wide e… they also don't want to stay inside, let them out, let them go, give amnesty to all prisoners…a great gesture, it's a gesture of Love, isn't it?.. of unconditional Love… and then what comes out is like, I compare it to a clister… what comes out is disgusting, but … once finished, we feel much better (laughs). But then, this also conveys to us a sense of the beauty of life. Despite all the negativity, evil and selfishness, the violence that is heard endlessly in the media, about the selfishness and corruption of humanity … if we prove this to ourselves, we realize that what lies beneath everything is unconditional Love ….

I don't expect you to believe me, but this is just a … suggestion a way of looking. It has nothing to do with liking. But it is an unconditional reality. It's real, it's not just a moment inspired by my life, when suddenly I love everyone. That's not it.

Let us acknowledge the unconditional, as in the ‘Third Noble Truth’ – the cessation of suffering … realising this reality. What begins ends. Allow things to end. Death is the end of a condition, cessation … death. And we are afraid of death. Therefore, many of you have come to say that a great deal of fear appears in your practice as you approach emptiness. Experiencing emptiness and "not me" is quite frightening. Because we're not prepared for it emotionally. We are emotionally conditioned to the extremes… and so we want joy and we fear suffering… success, euphoria and failure, “I am not fit for anything, life is worth nothing, it makes no sense”, and so on… so the emotions, these emotionally extremist habits, are related to this dualism of the eight world Dhammas. But emotionally we do not know how to relate, we are not improved. Our emotions, because they fit into the unknown and the uncertain, make us lose meaning. If we define ourselves as this or as that, we get a certain sense of what … is but if suddenly someone takes away our identities, we don't know who we are and that's very scary. So even if we assume ourselves quite negatively “I am an absolute failure without any hope”, at least we define ourselves (ri)… at least we know who we are (ri)… but if we convince ourselves “I am a vastly superior form of humanity” in this case we can both magnify ourselves and belittle … but when there is no “I” things change. I remember a few years ago, in Wat Pah Pong, when I was still with Ajahn Chah, I went through a period, with an inner voice, I felt that I was dying there, I felt that I was dying in that monastery… and I had this incredible kind of cry inside, sharpening “I want to live”… this inner voice “I am dying, I want to live” and suddenly I was intimidated and started looking around “this is a place of death, this monastery… Buddhism speaks only of death and annihilation” (smiling), and then all kinds of suspicions and fears came to me, “maybe it is even a diabolical religion… or exterminating”. And then this “I want to live” was like a scream inside me, but despite all this tremor, I managed to have enough inner vision to actually not believe it, not to waver … but it was very intimidating, very strong. That is, the more I develop this “awareness”, this becomes the greater force… and the feeling of myself as ego begins to panic “who am I then?.. I am going to die… I am afraid of death”. And then we often use the words ‘life’ and ‘death’ as a dualistic pair and say ‘life’ or ‘death’. But in the Buddhist way of looking at things, it is rather "birth" and "death" … birth and death yes, go together. The word "life" then means what?.. is it everlasting life?. could it be. However, in my experience, it is not about eternal conditions, conditions that last forever, but suddenly, the whole notion of dying, of me dying, died (laughing alone)… and death being dead, there is no longer dying then (laughing alone again)… so this is what Ajahn Chah always used to say, ‘die before you die’ that in Tai it is said ‘dtai gon dtai’ (laughing like a child)… and Ajahn Chah was constantly trying to say this, ‘die before you die’. And then this death of the ego, this powerful feeling of my distinction of 'I' and 'mine', as I trust this 'Conscious Presence', this powerful feeling of 'I' in keeping me the 'I', my distinction, my uniqueness, suddenly died. I could then let myself die if I realized it and saw it, since I was dying and suffering all the time, because it was something I couldn't go on.

So you just assume and act like you're this ego all the time … this ego is me and it's with me all the time and even when I'm asleep, I'm still Ajahn Sumedho. And then there is the way people speak loaded with the most varied terminology, in which they assume all those latent tendencies, repressed anger writhing from the depths and maybe there are even all kinds of dark energies inside waiting to leave with fears and everything around. So how do you end this? In the Buddhist approach, the Buddha addressed this problem by recognising that conditions give rise to other conditions – “dependent origin”. That is, ways to recognize your creation, as when there are conditions for anger and anger arises, it is nothing but something that is latent, something that underlies … internally unless you assume and identify yourself in reality with what is happening. And so I think that understanding “dependent origin” is a much more beneficial way of looking at experience, because, for example, when the sun shines, when it rains, when you are being praised, insulted, when you are feeling healthy or sick, emotions are always in line with conditions. And full awareness of the condition is not the condition. Therefore, it is not a condition to look for another condition. So this present consciousness is also aware of the personality or the moment when the conditions to be a person or a personality arise and I am so … I am happy person, unhappy person, angry person, angry person, depressed person, offended person, upset person, scared person. But with the “Conscious Presence”, as one recognizes what “Conscious Presence” is, one comes to ultimate simplicity. Like space, there is nothing complicated about it. It is nothing that depends on other conditions to be mindful. That is, even in the midst of hell one has full attention. Then in the Mahāyāna School, they have thus “A Lotus that blooms through Hell is indestructible” and then one sees the painting of this extremely delicate Lotus Flower and everything around it burning tremendously. That's my Icon, being this Lotus is a symbol of purity in Eastern religion. “A Lotus that blooms through Hell is indestructible” … Indestructible Lotus, “Conscious Presence”. And hell is still around, but this “Conscious Presence” is indestructible, which is why here it is about recognizing it, realizing it, not trying to possess it or create it. It is precisely here that words can always really divert us or lead us in the wrong direction, because we conceive and define “full attention” in our own way. We want to find out what it is, define it and talk about it. But it's nothing more than this. In reality it is nothing… except that it is simply attention to the present. It's not about selecting, it's not about focusing or having a preference for one thing over another and trying to control whatever it is, but about allowing ourselves to recognize this situation by which we are conditioned to become, to be born, to die, to be afraid, to like and not to like. This is our cultural conditioning and our personalities that are built on these … illusions and all the language we use, reinforces this illusion.

So these are the three ties that blind us to the path of the “Fourth Noble Truth”, which is based on Sammā-ditthi (right understanding). These three ties are then the ego (sakkāya-ditthi), the point of view of personality which is a created point of view; the cultural conditioning process, cultural conditioning; and the doubt that is the result of thought. If we think too much, we doubt too much. If one thinks too much, one is constantly a monk who never stops questioning, restless. There are a lot of people in college who are doubtful because they think. In Berkeley, there were so many skeptical, cynical … people, because … simply notice, when you think a lot, when you think about yourself, about your practice, about Buddhism, about something else, you start to doubt about it… and then this thinking creates this doubt (vicikichchā). That is why this realization, the recognition of the “Conscious Presence” (Awareness), is the target of the “Fourth Noble Truth”. It is an intelligent means of using something as vulgar as suffering, recognizing the causes of attachment, desire, letting go (opening one's hand) and then realizing cessation, that what has arisen has an end. One then wakes up, the “Conscious Presence” connects us to the absence, the cessation of something. And when there is cessation in consciousness, it is not death…I still breathe, I still feel alive, but suffering ends…and then when it is said, all conditional phenomenology is Dukkha (dissatisfaction-suffering), it is not about devaluing the beauty, nor the goodness, nor the graciousness of the conditioned world, but rather about highlighting its conditional nature, so that there is no attachment to any condition and keep out of ignorance.

Part of us is missing, we're not complete, there's a flaw, there's something missing …e while our identity is at that level of conditional phenomenology, no matter what you do, you're going to feel like there's something missing in your life. And then we can go looking for someone, or go looking for Power or professional placement… but no matter how much we look out there, there will always be a sense of lack, of imperfection… of failure. Because the flaw is simply not being fully conscious. You create this division, you separate …, and the other person may even make you feel complete, but when you leave, you're incomplete again. So it's just an illusory completeness.

The Buddha pointed to immortality instead of inspiring us only to cling to good conditions, to what becomes good, or to live life ignoring the bad and trying only to pay attention to the good. But we learned from both … they both have identical value, the good and the bad … the right and the wrong. Because all conditions, if we leave, will have an end. And then cessation is peace, liberation. And that's love.

Love underlies everything on this planet, in this Universe in which we live. Are we just greedy machines?.. no, we love, we feel Love, we feel something deeper than just personal preferences. Beyond this kind of selfishness and blindness of the human being, there is also a feeling for immortality, for the spiritual, for the ultimate truth. And that's what religion is all about, all religions everywhere, with different kinds of recognition and ways of proclaiming it, where even the symbol they use can vary, but that's where all religions point, because that's something that's in the human condition. So in terms of the practice of “Metta” we realize that the more we come into contact or rest, or trust in this unconditional Love, this is one of the true ways in which we can help all sentient beings at this very moment. On a personal level you may think, 'how am I going to help?..all those people die in Iraq and all the kind of violence that goes around?' … but the more human beings recognize, wake up to the ultimate truth, then this will be for the benefit of all, because everything is interconnected…this is not just me feeling liberated from suffering and 'to hell the rest of you' (ri)… because it is no longer me. I am no longer an isolated entity with this human form. Then compassion, Karunā-Muditā-Upekkhā, the Brahma-vihāras, come from there. These are the responses to suffering and beauty that we experience through consciousness as independent entities of personal conditioning that blind us to ultimate truth.

… I now offer this as a reflection…

Translation of Dhammiko Bhikkhu