Day 6 Last Day Thoughts -High Altitude Retreat

Here we are on the last day of our retreat. And during the interviews, many of you have asked, what do I do off retreat? How do I continue? What more do I need to know? And so on. You know, the retreat is a very interesting container, because it's where you try to get the most perfect conditions for your practice.

And the real practice begins tomorrow, when you get off retreat. Because that's what life is. Life is meeting with people, relating with them, understanding your emotions, understanding your triggers, noticing your blind spots, your shadows, all kinds of things that can come up. And we try to recreate the experience of the retreat. Enthusiasm: I will meditate one hour every day for the next year. And then we fail. Invariably we fail. How do I know that? Because every person who's come on retreat, when I've asked them, so have you been practicing? No, I came here for the retreat. That's not everybody, but it's been my experience with most people.

And I don't say that as a way of being blaming towards anyone. It's more about the fact that that's the nature of life. We get enthusiastic about things, and other things come in the way: situations, people, relationships, lack of relationships, the house burns down, there's a flash flood, all kinds of things that happen. But those are the moments, those are the situations that help us to see the efficacy of our practice.

When the rubber meets the road, as they say, with these situations: to what level of patience are you willing to go when things are not going your way, seemingly not going your way? Or to what extent are you able to surrender into the expanse and be in that space where not my will, but thy will be done?

That's a very tall order because our analytical mind thinks we know better. Oh, I've seen this before. I know what to do. But if we can surrender into the great expanse, surrender into that space where to make forced choices but rather be available to what is and to what unfolds, then there is magic in that. I feel like recounting the story of Bahiya because it's such a great story. interesting story. Bhaiya was a meditator.

The commentaries, if I'm not mistaken, say that he found himself shipwrecked. He found himself on the sea, and then his ship crashed, and all he had was wooden pieces to put on as his robes. That's why he was called Bahiya of the Bark Cloth. I don't know why he didn't go to the market and just get robes. But in any case, he was in a place called Suppara, or Nala Suppara, which is a few hours away from Mumbai.

I used to live there when I was around one or two years old. Suppara was a port city that traded with all over the world, with Mesopotamia and Israel and Egypt. And so Bahiya was there, and he, as the understanding is, studied the Upanishads, or probably was with certain teachers who were transmitters of the Upanishads, Advaitic texts, Advaita Vedanta texts. Vedanta means the end of the Vedas, and Advaita means not two, not divided.

So it's a non-dual perspective. And there is an Upanishad, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which talks about the Atman, and it says that there is a self behind the ears, the eyes, the nose, the tongue, the body. It is the eye behind the eyes, the ear behind the ears. It is that which sees and hears behind the eyes and ears, and so on and so forth.

And he had that idea. He had that understanding in him, and he thought of himself as an arahant, a perfected one. And as the story goes, a deva, who was supposedly a relative of his, came to Bahiya and said, you are not an arahant, Bahiya. You are mistaken. Go to the Buddha and he will teach you. Go up to Savatthi, or Sravasti.

That's not a one-day walk. Anybody who knows the geography of India, Suppara is in the west of India, and Savatthi is up in the north. It will take many days, perhaps weeks, to get there. But he was dedicated, and the sutta says he didn't stop for anything. He kept going, he kept going. He was so devoted to freedom, so devoted to being free from the shackles of this insidious samsara, that he made that trek, he made that journey.

And it says that once he got to Savatthi, he went to Anathapindika's Park. He saw the monks over there and he said, where is the Buddha? I would like to see the Buddha. They said he has gone on alms round. So he hurriedly went to find the Buddha. And he saw the Buddha and he said, at any point in time, I could die.

Please give me the teaching in brief, that I may be liberated. The Buddha said, it's lunchtime. I'm on my break. Come back later. And as with any Buddha, when you ask a Buddha three times, they must say yes. Bahiya repeated himself twice. He said, I could die at any moment. Please give me the teaching in brief, that I may be liberated.

So the Buddha, in his exasperation, said, all right, fine. Let me teach you. When, or he first starts, in the seen, there is only the seen. In the hearing, there is only the heard. In the sensing, there is only the sense. In the cognizing, there is only the cognized. When, Baya, you are not in that, then, Baya, you are not shaped by that. in or neither before or after that, or in between the two. Just this is the cessation of suffering. Just this is the liberation of the mind, the liberation of the heart.

So Bahiya took those instructions to heart, and he practiced and he meditated upon what the Buddha said. I find this instruction to be the most effective instruction, in my mind, in regards to how to free oneself of suffering. And the brilliance of the Buddha, to be able to give him that particular instruction, he must have read his mind, because he must have understood where he came from, the Upanishadic tradition, which had the belief that the self is the seer behind the seen, the hearer behind the heard, the sensor behind the sensed, the cognizer behind the cognized.

And just that one nuanced shift, the Buddha gave him that pivot. He said, no, in the seeing, there's only the seen. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the sensing, there's only the sensed. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized. And so the sutta continues and says, Bahiya went to practice, understanding in brief what the Buddha taught. And his mind was liberated.

His taints were destroyed. There was no more becoming. There was no more birth. And Bahiya didn't do anything. He didn't go back to the Buddha. He didn't go to the Sangha. He didn't become a monk. He didn't take on the robes. He became an arahant. And he walked down the road, didn't look both ways, and was gored by a bull.

A bull. He was stabbed by the horn of a bull, because the calf was running around and the bull or the cow was chasing after it, and he didn't see that, and he was killed. And so news came back like, Bahiya was killed in an accident. And so they went to the Buddha. He said, Bahiya had come to you and he had received instruction from you, so what is his state? What is his future? What is his future destination?

And the Buddha said, he has become one of the perfected ones. He has become an arahant. There is no more becoming for him. So then they said, what shall we do with his body? And he said, give him the same honour as you would an arahant. And so that's what they did. Notice that this person became an arahant, became self-perfected, and died, was killed.

That's how life is. We don't know how things can end up. We think we know. We have a plan. We have intentions. We have a five-year plan. We have a one-year plan. We have fitness goals. We have, you know, I'm going to do this and this and this, and I'm going to make sure I write this book, and I'm going to go on this retreat, and I'm going to do that, and so on and so forth.

And that's all well and wonderful. But anything can happen. And this story, or this sutta, to me illustrates two things. That we don't need to conceptually elaborate the Dhamma. If we just understood these instructions, took them to heart, practiced them, we would absolutely see the cessation of suffering. And the second is, how do we meet those situations that are unexpected?

We don't need to force a certain behavior. We don't need to force a certain action. We don't need to be the good little girl or the good little boy. We just have to meet life as it comes. And we don't know when our next breath will be our last breath. I can tell you that from experience. This is interesting when you face death and you meet death in that way.

A lot of priorities fall away. And the only thing that you're concerned about is that willingness to meet life as it comes, instead of making plans and falling back on them as security. I'm not saying not to make plans, but I am saying to observe how your mind responds and reacts to those situations where you're making a plan and there's all this elaborate proliferation that can arise.

Come back to now. Come back to here. Understand the source of all of that is in nibbana consciousness, is in the knowing. We love to practice. We love to have a game plan. We love to get into the jhanas, because there's security in that. There's a sense of comfort in that. There's a sense of reliability in that.

But if we function from this space, where there's a constant knowing of life as and when it comes, that is the ultimate refuge. That is the ultimate security. That is the nibbana that the Buddha is always referring to. A lot of people want to know, how long should I meditate for when I get off retreat? Whatever feels appropriate for you. But more importantly, how do you meet life off of the cushion?

How do you relate to the world off of the cushion? If you've come on retreat to attain liberation, to have more peace of mind, to understand the world better, yourself better, whatever it might be, that is an ongoing process. It doesn't stop at the end of retreat. The world, the real world outside, is our playground, is our testing ground, to see how well we can attune to that space, to that field. Somebody asked about, you know, technology. How do we deal with technology? How do we deal with cell phones, smartphones, computers and the internet and emails and WhatsApp and Telegram and Signal and who knows what else?

What I would say about that is that technology is like the knife. You can use the knife to cut up vegetables, to cut up meat or to stab someone. To warm up a meal, to cook up a meal for warmth, and so on. Or you can use the fire to burn down the place. So it's not about the technology. It's not about the world out there. It's really about our own intention and how selective we are with our attention.

In 2024, I was with some friends in the mountains, a place called Mukteswar, just further from Mukteswar. And there was another friend, a fellow practitioner that I was talking with, and he asked, how do you deal with the world? How do you deal with news? How do you deal with media and this onslaught of information and decision-making and processing and all of that?

And my answer to that is, and my answer continues to be this, that your greatest currency in the world, in your life, is your attention. How you choose to pay your attention is up to you. The world is vying for your attention. In fact, attention itself has become monetized, right? On social media, on Instagram. And I'm not speaking from the soapbox.

I love Instagram. I love to just, you know, it's my vice. Everybody wants to show them that again. And so it's really just being understanding of how you decide to spend your time, and especially your attention. You can be mindful about it, you can be mindless about it, that's up to you. And when you become inundated with too much information, you know what that feels like. You know how that feels like to your nervous system, day, how drained you are. You know, I don't, I'm not interested in the news at all. I'm not interested in being well informed. I'm not interested in knowing what's going on around the world, because I have people who come to me and tell me, did you hear about this? Do you hear about that? And so, okay, cool.

What does that have to do with me? What does it have to do with my life? And so the idea is, do what you will with technology. Use it in the way that makes sense for you, in a way that's skillful, in a way that is kusala, right? Skillfully liberating. We wouldn't be here streaming on this camera. We wouldn't be on YouTube.

We wouldn't be spreading the Dhamma through technology. So we're not Luddites, right? Or Luddites, whatever it is. So you decide how you want to do that. That's why on this retreat, using the phone or not using the phone is up to you. The onus is on you. No one is going to live your life for you. No one is going to be telling you what to do.

You are responsible for your own choices and how you decide to live your life. How you decide to spend your time, how you decide to spend your attention. My wish for all of you is that, regardless of whether you got anything from this retreat or not, you've let go a little bit more, and that's allowed you to see some of those cobwebs in the mind and clear those up, and so when you get back into the world you're able to be

more intentional with what you do. You're able to be more skillful in how you do whatever it is that you do. You're able to be more loving and kind with the people in your life. You're able to have that reciprocity with people who mean something to you. Forget about the world. Forget about society, what you have to do or how you have to show up, and all of those things. Those come later.

The people in your life right here, right now, who are your friends, who are your family, who are your well-wishers, how do you do, how do you show up for them? Then later on, if you feel like you can take care of the world, and you might not like what I say, but that's fine. But you don't owe anything to the world, and the world doesn't owe anything to you.

Forget about the causality and conditionality of, I've come into this world and I must give back to it, and so on and so forth. By focusing on your own development, focusing on your own practice, on your own liberation, life has a way of bringing that to the world. You are not in control of that. You are not in control of how that happens.

But when you have a certain level of understanding and are rooted in the Dhamma, the Dhamma will take care of you. It will show you the path. And that's my wish for all of you. What was the process like for you to answer that call? Oh. Well, it was interesting because on that retreat, Mark and Antra were also there. If anybody listens to the actual conversation as well, Bhante also was like, have you thought about teaching?

And I wasn't ready to answer the call just yet. Because I was in San Diego, I was having fun, I was doing my own thing, email responses for people on retreat, like if they're having certain reports and responding to that. And it never came to me, it never occurred to me, this desire to teach. It was like, that's what I was talking about, like once you are fully established in the Dhamma, or established to a certain point, it starts to move things around for you, where that's what happens or can happen.

So this was 2017 probably, 2016. I did the online retreat with David. 2017, I came here for a couple of days. And then I was practicing on my own with different things. And then 2018 and 19, I was doing a little bit of help through emailing, responding. And 2019, I left San Diego, end of 2019, because I just didn't feel like it was worth doing anymore.

And I moved over to Cambodia, where my parents were. And I practiced and practiced and practiced. And it was around 7.30 on the 26th of January 2020 that there was this profound shift in my experience. And I wrote a letter to David. I wish I had the letter. I could have read that. But if I find it, I'll share it with you guys. It was just my... there's a word called udana, which means inspired saying. It was just what came after that experience, this aliveness and awakeness to reality.

And there is no more sense of a feeler and a perceiver in all of these things. And just this is the Dhamma. That was something like that that I said. And I think because of that letter, it became public across circles. And people were like, who is this person? What have they written? And what's going on? And I got an email from somebody in the Netherlands, asking about practice. They sent me a Muse headband to look at my brainwave while I was in Nirodha and all of these things, you know.

And I had no desire still to teach. And my father asked me, what do you want to do now? Like, what are you going to do for your life? What are you going to do for money? What are you going to do? And this is what I told him. I said to him, that if something gets in the way of my peace of mind, then I'm not going to do it.

My peace of mind is my touchstone. And if I have to sacrifice my peace of mind, then I'm not going to do it. And he got off my case after that. He understood. I can't get through to this kid. So anyway, then I thought, I'll become a pilot. I get to travel. So I went to the Maldives to learn aviation.

And I have 80 hours of flight experience under my belt. And it was a very fun time. We did ground training, and then we did all kinds of flight training. There was this one time when we were doing stalls. I don't know if you guys know what stalling is. It's like you go up, you go way too up, and now it just stalls. It doesn't continue the way it's supposed to. So learning how to recover from a stall, and we did one too many, and somehow that conked out the radio.

So we weren't able to contact the tower in order for us to land. And I remember I could see the sea underneath me, a clear blue sea. It was beautiful, but now it was deadly, because if we are not able to land, what are we going to do? And I heard horror stories of what happens when the plane crashes into the water. It's not that great. Quiet and calm as best as I could.

And my instructor said, okay, you need to get closer to the tower so I can call them up on the cell phone and tell them we are going to land and, you know, do the whole procedure. So I said, okay. And he looked at me and he said, why are you so calm? And I gave him a Dhamma talk. First student. First sutta. Obviously we survived and we landed and everything was fine. And so the other guys would ask me, what do you do? How do you meditate? And I started talking about that. And then the pandemic struck, and so we couldn't fly anymore. And I was sort of in the Maldives enjoying island life for a while, but I got bored of it and went to the mountains, went back to the Himalayas.

And that's where the famous cave story is and all of that. But while that was going on, I would get emails. I'd go on Skype calls with monastics and other students talking about practice, talking about meditation. And so I could have either been a pilot, seems like that wasn't the case, and it just took me into a direction of instructing and teaching and guiding. And the rest is history.