The 37 Requisites to Enlightenment -Sunday with Delson

Okay, Dawson, you are on. Okay. All right. Hello, everyone. I am going to be, let's see, share my screen first. Let's see. Of the Digha Nikaya number 16, which is, in the entirety of the Pali Canon, the longest sutta that there is. This is the Maha Parinibbana Sutta. And it will take days to really finish kind of talking about everything that's in here.

But I figured I would take a section. I was reading this a few days ago, just kind of browsing through, and I thought, oh, this is a good section, because the Buddha gives the entire spine of what we should be doing in terms of the practice in a very short and direct way, and so we can discuss that today. So this is, as I say, the Digha Nikaya 16, Maha Parinibbana Sutta. This is section 3.50. So this is a different translation as compared to the Bhikkhu Bodhi version. This is translated by Maurice Walsh.

So that's why you'll see the languages like, then the Lord, you know, those kinds of things. So the Lord entered the assembly hall and sat down on the prepared seat. Then he said to the monks, monks, for this reason, those matters which I have discovered and proclaimed should be thoroughly learned by you. practiced developed and cultivated so that this holy life may endure for a long time that it may be for the benefit and happiness of the multitude out of compassion for the world for the benefit and happiness of devas and humans and what are no here we go and what are those matters they are the four foundations of mindfulness

The Four Right Efforts. The Four Roads to Power. The Five Spiritual Faculties. The Five Mental Powers. The Seven Factors of Enlightenment. The Noble Eightfold Path. This is what we will be focusing on today. Because this is really all the Buddha has taught in one capacity or another. We've always talked about jhanas. We've always talked about dependent origination. sense of the Dhamma. Once you understand dependent origination, then you understand the Dhamma. Once you have seen it, then you have seen the Dhamma. And dependent origination is the understanding of how samsara works.

And then the reversal of that is leading you to Nibbana, or the Nibbana tattu, which is outside of the purview of dependent origination. It's beyond, outside of ignorance. It's the destruction of ignorance. But when it comes to the practice, to what needs to be pursued, what needs to be cultivated, what needs to be developed, what needs to be perfected, in order for us to get to the understanding of what this process of dependent origination is on an experiential level, and what it means to experience the fruits of the practice.

You need these things. These are non-negotiables. And seldom do we really talk about them. Seldom do you really hear about them, but they are what are known as the 37 requisites for awakening, and I want to go through all of these so we kind of get an understanding. They have a lot of overlap. These 37 requisites, you might see them repeated in ways that overlap, all of them, and that is in essence mindfulness. When we talk about mindfulness we're talking about the recognition of what is here, right here, right now. And that recognition process arises when you have yoniso manasikara, and you have sati sampajanna. So all of that put together is the remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. Why are we doing that? Why are we trying to figure out how the mind moves? Because when we see how the mind moves, we see how the mind creates suffering for itself.

We see how the mind experiences relief from suffering. It's not that we need to look at each and every thing. That becomes a more concentrated practice requiring a deeper one-pointed focus, which is not what the Buddha taught at all. No matter how many times you're going to read in different translations things like absorption, or immersion, or concentration, or focus, or whatever it is, or ekaggata, right? That's the one that's always translated as single-pointed focus or concentration, one-pointedness. But ekaggata has a different context.

It's not just, you know, something to do with samadhi as collectedness. It's more about the mind letting go. It's born from letting go, a mind that has the capacity to revolve or orbit its object of meditation. So mindfulness is the key component here. It is the foundation for everything. Mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening right here, right now. While you are listening to me say these words, where is your mind?

Is it fully in the present with regards to every word that I am saying? Or is it ping-ponging between what I'm saying and the reflection of what is being said, and then thinking about last night's cat video, or thinking what you're going to eat for breakfast? Or is it completely here? Where is your mind? The world we live in today is full of so many distractions. It's not like there were not distractions in the past. It's not like during the Buddha's time there were not things to get distracted about. People still had very similar worries to the ones we have now, in terms of survival, in terms of making a good amount of living, good earning, making sure we have food in our bellies, these kinds of things. We've just evolved to make those things more complicated. So the world is definitely more complex than it was, or whatever it is, but the same problems arose for those people 2600 years ago. How do I keep my mind collected? How do I stay present with what I'm doing?

It was arguably a little easier, because they didn't have what we call smartphones. They didn't have a bunch of different screens that they could look at all day long and try to figure out what's happening in... What we want is silence. What we want is tranquility. What we want is peace of mind. And so the Buddha here is giving us these things. He's telling us these are essential things, essentially the last set of instructions that the Buddha is giving before he goes away forever, before he is completely extinguished without remainder.

We never think about the things that we will say or do in our last moments, because we don't know what's going to happen in our last moments. The difference is that here is someone like the Buddha who has understood that three months from now, as you'll see later on when we read, he will be gone, as per this particular situation.

There are many masters who have done that in the past, and even in the modern day. There's actually a book, which I need to find out the title of, but I remember reading back in 2014, or 2015. It's a small book with a compilation of all of the different masters of different traditions who would know when their time was up. So when you have a certain level of realization, when you're at a certain level of understanding and wisdom, you can start to see how the body is going to decay. You can start to see how the life energies are starting to withdraw. In this case, the Buddha had done this. I'm giving you some context.

did this already, and he let go of what's known as the life principle, the jivitindriya, also known as the ayu sankharas, that are related to the vitality of the body. But my point is you can figure out at a certain level of realization that this is now time to go. And with such a kind of mind, and with such a kind of life, and with such a kind of awareness and understanding, he didn't mince words about what should be said and what shouldn't be said. He knew what exactly he needed to teach the people, his monks, his bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, the students that he was going to leave into the world. And so this set of instructions, I believe, in my own personal opinion, are very important.

To what it's cutting all the fat down. It's trimming out all the fencing. Just focus on these things and you're good to go. So let's explore these four foundations of mindfulness. What are the four foundations of mindfulness? What does that mean when we say four foundations of mindfulness? The word foundation comes from the word trastana, which means to establish or to place. I like to use the word anchor. It anchors our mind to the here and now. And so when you say four foundations of mindfulness, there are four broad categories.

There's the body, there's the feelings, there's the mind, and there's phenomena. The body, here, in terms of what? What's happening to the body in terms of the breathing, right? So you have the anapanasati, which means the mindfulness of the inhalation and exhalation of the body, or of the breath. Anapana. So that's actually in Sanskrit, it's apana prana, which is apana is the exhalation. Prana is the inhalation.

So just observing the breath, breathing in the breath, breathing out, breathing in long. He knows he's breathing in long, breathing in short. He knows he's breathing in short, and so on. And as you do this, your mind naturally gets collected. And as it gets collected, it starts to experience deeper degrees of mindfulness, which means what? The mind is anchored in the present.

Being anchored in the present, the mind experiences the other enlightened factors and then experiences jhanas. So the Buddha has given many different contemplation practices for mindfulness of body. The practice of the different elements that make up the body. The practice of the different organs and bones and things like that that make up the body. The body in various degrees of decay, when it is a corpse. So all of these are different techniques or processes to deal with different challenges. You have a mind that's very speculative, use the mindfulness of the body. You have a mind that has a sort of way of being lustful about the body, use contemplation of the body as the organs.

Use the contemplation of the body as a corpse in various stages of decay. Use the body, or the mindfulness of the body, as seeing it in different elements. This helps to see the body as an impersonal process. And that is development of wisdom. The realization that this body is not me, not mine, not myself. So when we say foundation, it just means that we're allowing the body to become an anchor, to become more present. Of the series of the enlightened factors comes through and insight is developed. There's collectedness and there's insight, some of that in vipassana. The same with the foundation for the feelings, the sensations that happen: a pleasant sensation that is bodily, a pleasant sensation that is otherworldly, that means that's happening in the mind, that's happening in meditation; an unpleasant sensation, or a neutral sensation. So it's not about trying to figure out what exactly that sensation is. That happens coupled with the mindfulness, that's the discernment that happens. So everything that we're doing in terms of the foundations of mindfulness is just bringing us back here, and it really is that simple.

People will kind of say, oh yeah, they brush it aside and say, okay, I get it, yeah, you're talking about the power of now and you're talking about being in the present moment, so what? But you don't realize, people don't realize, we don't realize how important and how profound it actually is to be fully present. In fact, there is a sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 130, it's either 130 or 131. It's in that sequence between 131 to 138, somewhere there in the Majjhima Nikaya, where there's a day we're talking about this, and it's the one excellent night, it's one of those series of one excellent nights, and there the deva talks about neither going into the past or going into the future but being present right here and right now without attaching any sense of self to the present, just that in experiencing that, one experiences the freedom of mind, the liberation of mind. So that ability to come back into the present is just the beginning.

Because then we start to see, as things come and go, where the attachments lie, where the aversion lies, where the identification lies, and how we can just relax and let go, and then letting go and relaxing using right effort, which is another important theme of all of the 37 requisites. This process. When you talk about the mindfulness of mental phenomena, or the mind, there are different mind states. This is called citta, which is sometimes translated as consciousness, but we're talking about mental states: a mental state that is constricted or contracted, a mental state that is expansive, a mental state that is liberated, a mental state that is not liberated, a mental state that is surpassed, unsurpassed, all of these different qualities of mind.

Now, whether you know or can name what that state is, is irrelevant in this moment. What's relevant is you are present and aware that there is this particular state of mind. If you can name it, great. But if you just are aware, okay, the mind is this way, the mind is that way, okay. If you have to be more specific, that's just using what's known as mimamsa in Pali or mimamsa in Sanskrit, which is reflection, understanding, very closely related to dhamma vichaya, which is one of the enlightenment factors, which I translated as discernment, the discernment between what is present and what is not present.

And then the mindfulness of dhamma, dhamma upasana. What does this word upasana actually mean? So important to understand. Upasana, this is a word that is used even in other traditions. What I mean by that is when you're doing something like yoga or any kind of meditation, they talk about upasana. Upasana means to take up as an object, to take up as a subject, to take up as something to keep your mind plugged into.

So we have kaya upasana, that's the bodily. We have vedana upasana, that's the sensations or feeling. The mental states, and now we have dhamma upasana, phenomena, so different kinds of phenomena. So here the Buddha points out the seeing of the enlightenment factors, those are phenomena that are happening. The seeing of the four noble truths, the seeing of the five hindrances, the seeing of the four, uh, the five aggregates. All of these are different phenomena that you see arising and passing away. Yeah, they happen in the mind or they happen in the body or whatever, but the Buddha has kind of just allowed us to see it in different categories. And that's just for the mind to understand.

Ultimately, all of these are points for the mind to hold on to or to anchor into so that it relaxes back into the here and now. The four right efforts. What are the four right efforts? The four right efforts are the seeing and the prevention of the arising of unarisen unwholesome states. In other words, we are meditating or listening to a Dhamma talk and our attention is there, but then this, the recognition of that, is the first right effort.

We're looking at that. What has that done? It has stopped all the other potential thoughts of distractions from coming up again. When we do this, then we relax, right? We release and we relax. We let go of already a risen unwholesome state. So whatever we're thinking about that is taking away from listening to the talk, whatever is the distraction that is present while we're meditating in that moment, we drop it, we let it go, and we relax. The third right effort is to generate a wholesome state of mind.

So in this case we come back to our object. That object itself is wholesome, why? Because there's no craving in it, there's no desire to control it one way or the other. It is just a mental object, whether that's loving kindness or one of the enlightenment factors or the breath or the contemplation of the body elements or whatever it might be. And then the fourth right effort is maintaining awareness of that wholesome state of mind. This is what we're doing when we talk about the six R's.

There are others out there who say, oh, you have just co-opted the four right efforts and you've kind of pigeonholed them into the six R's. That's one perspective. You can think of it in that way. But if you actually use your mind and pay attention and listen with critical thinking, you can see for yourself how, when you're using the six R's, you can use the words. You can use six R's. You can use drops, which Bhante would use sometimes.

Don't resist or push. Soften and smile. Sometimes I've given the four R's to simplify for people. One of the four R's in this case is to recognize, it's to relax, it's to re-smile, and it's to return. That's what you're doing with this process. Recognizing there is an unwholesome state, right effort, abandoning it, releasing or relaxing, and bringing up a wholesome state. In this case we're doing the re-smile, or paying attention to the smile, and bringing up something like loving kindness or equanimity or staying with a quiet mind, whatever it is. Right, and returning and staying there, that's the maintaining of that process. So don't get hung up on whether it actually is or whether it's not. If the spirit of the six R's is meant for us to follow the Dhamma, it's meant to follow the four right efforts. The four right efforts. There is another sutta, which is the Great Forty. It's called the Great Forty in Majjhima Nikaya, and there the Buddha talks about how these three run around each other: right view, right effort, and right mindfulness.

You need right view, the view of what is cause and effect, action and consequence. You need the right view to understand what is wholesome and unwholesome, what works and what doesn't work. You need the right effort to abandon the unwholesome states and bring up the wholesome states. You need the right mindfulness so you can do it in a way that is with discernment.

So right effort here is whenever we're applying the six R's, whenever we're applying prompts, whenever we're applying just a simple process of recognizing, letting go, relaxing and coming back, we are applying the Dhamma. We are applying the teachings in this way. The four roads to power. What does that mean? The four roads to power, this is what's known as iddhipada. Or siddhi pada. Pada here means steps or feet, actually, and so sometimes it's translated as the four bases of psychic powers.

And the question might arise, why do we need psychic powers to develop the mind and to attain awakening? Because as per the Buddha, as per the Dhamma, the highest level of psychic faculties or highest level psychic powers you can have is the destruction of the taints. Is the realization of the Four Noble Truths. And everything else is optional. You know, the divine ear, the divine sight, the ability to go from New York to L.A. and save on your airfare by snap of a finger, all of these different things. They're all optional.

But the faculty or the psychic power, as he calls it, the psychic power, the destruction of the taints, that is the highest. And you need these four things. Four things. Well, first you need what's known as chanda. Chanda is a wholesome intention. It's not craving because it's not obsession. It's having the understanding that there's a goal in mind and I'm directing my mind towards that particular goal. That's it, that's what chanda is. Then you need a mind, you need citta, obviously. You need energy or effort, here we're talking again about the right effort. And you need what's known as mimamsa, which is reflection, which is discernment. When you have these four, obviously you need a mind. You need a mind that can reflect. You need a mind that can let go and observe and discern, a mind that can place its attention towards a particular goal.

All of these are required for the development of that psychic faculty. Then the five spiritual faculties and the five mental powers. This is an interesting one. I'm going to actually go to the footnotes so you can see for yourself what we're referring to. Faith needs to be balanced with wisdom and energy with collectedness, but mindfulness is self-balancing. So I will explain what all of this means, but what are we talking about when we say these five faculties? The names of the powers are the same, as we'll see.

These five faculties are faith. What do we mean by faith, or saddha? Are we saying that we must believe the Buddha to be our Lord and Savior? No, that's not what it's saying. Confidence here refers to a level of willingness to understand what the Dhamma is about. And that means not having any form of doubt that is born from contempt.

What does that mean? When you have contempt for something, you don't take it seriously. And I don't mean take it seriously in the way of being humorous. I'm talking about not taking it seriously in the sense of, why should I listen to this person? Or why should I listen to this Dhamma? Confidence here is the first level, which is, let me put aside some of my preconceptions and listen with a clear mind, see if I can apply it and see if it actually works for me. If it doesn't, I can throw it away, go back to my preconceptions.

No harm in that. But the ability to take that step is important. And then that develops into what's known as experiential confidence. This happens at stream entry. That's one of the powers, as it says here in 4.13. The names of these powers are the same as those of the faculties listed. The difference is that at stream entry, they become powers as being unshakable by their opposites. So in other words, these things, faith or confidence, energy, mindfulness, collectedness, and wisdom, are there as a quality of the mind of somebody who has entered the stream. Energy here, when we say energy, balancing our energy, our mental energy, our spiritual energy, however you want to put it: the ability to let go when things become too constricted, the ability to experience that, the ability to bring up more collectedness, more joy when the mind is feeling sluggish. This balancing is really important.

Mindfulness, we've talked about this, collectedness. What is collectedness? Collectedness is samadhi. Sama means same. The is mind or intellect. The mind is able to be equanimous. way that isn't too much this way or too much that way, it's just here, present, collected, composed, tranquil, and relaxed. And wisdom, the development of wisdom. What is this wisdom? It's a specialized wisdom in the Dhamma, which is related to the understanding of causality and conditionality, i.e. dependent origination. Mindfulness is the only thing you can't have too much of.

Everything else you can have too much of, but mindfulness balances everything else out. The seven enlightenment factors, or the seven factors of awakening. What are those factors? These factors are mindfulness, discernment, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, and equanimity. When we start to experience the letting go of hindrances and start to bring the mind towards a specific object of meditation, it starts to become quite secluded from sensual pleasures and secluded from unwholesome states. This is the first two factors of the first jhana. And when we're doing this, the enlightenment factors start to balance out. They start to revolve into a cycle.

And as we get deeper into the second jhana, the third jhana, the fourth jhana, they become the wheel that spins that process. They become the spokes of that wheel that spins. So what are these things that we're talking about? Let's discuss that. When we say discernment, discernment is a great counter to doubt in terms of: what am I feeling right now? Discernment allows us to see, oh, there is a wholesome mind state present, so there's nothing for me to do. I can just remain in that. My mind is free of any kind of craving. Oh, there's some irritation going on.

So once I have that, then I can let go. What do I let go of? I let go of the unwholesome state, which is what I let go by using the balancing of the energy. There's too much restlessness in my mind, that means I'm over-concentrated. I'm too focused. I have too much joy going on. I can relax. I can tranquilize. I can bring some equanimity. I can bring some tranquility.

When I do this process of letting go, I experience the joy of letting go. And that is the piti that we experience in the first and second jhana. And eventually our mind becomes tranquilized and we have tranquility. And then our mind becomes collected. And now it becomes super collected. Not one-pointed, but a really nice, good level of collectedness, which happens at the third and fourth jhana. Now, at the fourth jhana, what is the main signature?

He has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity, which means now I have deep degrees of equanimity, which means I can stay where I am without getting caught up one way or the other. Equanimity: free of any expectations, content with what is happening here right now, not looking forward to the next thing, not trying to figure out what do I do now, not trying to figure out when will I get there, but content. In fact, you should all try this exercise. I want you all to try to think about your next thought. Find out what your next thought is going to be. The funny thing is, as soon as you do that, your mind becomes quiet, because it's when we become too concentrated and we're trying to focus on one thing here that our mind wants to go and do something else. But as soon as we say, okay, let me look at what the next thing is, there's no next thing there. It's a mirage, it's an illusion. Anticipation of 'I have to get somewhere,' but if I'm content right here, right now...

There's nothing for me to do and I can just relax in that. And to the outside world that seems like a very ineffective way of living, and the reason is because we are in a world. The whole world is after recognition and validation. The whole world is after all of that, because all it wants is love. At the end of the day, as cliche as it sounds, it just wants love.

And our different forms of love come in the form of sex, money, power, validation, recognition, all of these different things. Being recognized for how great of a meditator we are by the teacher, or being recognized and being proud of ourselves. Hey, I made it, I got it, I got there. Enlightenment becomes another drug that we go chasing after, and the chasing after is what we have to let go of. And equanimity, the letting go of anticipation, helps us get there. That's the irony. This is why I tell everybody.

You will experience it when you least expect it. Why do I say that? When you least expect it. Because no anticipation will be there. There will be beautiful, absolute equanimity there. When you least expect it. And the irony is when you least expect it, boom. There are the experiences. And then finally we have the Noble Eightfold Path. What is the Noble Eightfold Path? How do we define the Noble Eightfold Path? There are many ways of understanding it. One way is that the Noble Eightfold Path is the middle path. There are these two paths that are ignoble, as the Buddha says: the one path that leads toward suffering, which is the path of overindulgence, the path of 'I have to own, I have to make more, I have to be recognized, I have to, I have to, I have to have to do all of these things,' more accumulation of things and people and prizes and awards, and then owning them and then protecting them and becoming identified with them.

Then there's a path of asceticism. The path that says, no, I'm going to let go of all of that. Not even, for some people, as I've seen in India, I'm not even going to wear any clothes. I'm going to just eat whatever falls off the tree. I'm not even going to pluck it. He went to extreme amounts of that as the bodhisattva, to the point of almost dying.

And then he realized there is a path that is balanced, a path that is measured, a path that leads to the end of suffering. And this is what I, we have something called the CMS, content management system. The Eightfold Path is your karma management system. It's your KMS. It's your ability to see when karma arises and understanding how to let that go in the present moment.

So what are the factors of the Eightfold Path? Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right collectedness. Right view, basic right view, is the understanding: if I do something to you at some point with a certain intention, it will come back to me in some form at some point in time. Causes and conditions are present. That's the mundane. The super mundane is the understanding of the four noble truths.

That is, I've understood how suffering arises. I've abandoned the causes and conditions for that suffering. I've experienced and realized for myself the cessation of that suffering by cultivating the eightfold path, which is the fourth noble truth. Right intention. Basically, the understanding of right intention is do no harm, and have contentment, have no thoughts of harming another being, and be content in what is present. Right speech, right action, right, this is taking care of your Dhamma in terms of what you do in this world, how you interact with people. Don't cause any harm. Be impeccable with your speech. This is what we call think before you speak. Is it the right time to say what you want to say?

Is it going to be honest? What is the intention behind it? Is it necessary? And can you say it with some level of kindness? Right action. Keeping the precepts. Don't cheat people. Don't steal from people. Don't kill people or beings. And then right livelihood. What kind of work, career, job, profession, business, trade, whatever it is that you do, to make your money, to have enough food, clothing, shelter, and medicines, what are you doing that is not causing others harm?

That's it. If you understand this, then your mind becomes, one layer of your mind becomes calmer and more collected. There's no more of this, am I doing the right thing? I don't know if I should do this. I don't know if I should do that. It's because of all of these different things that we're contemplating. Maybe at some point we're not doing it the right way. When we say right way, we're not saying right according to some god. We're right according to some telkman. We're saying right in the sense of the order of things. The word right comes from the Sanskrit rita. R-T-A. Rita. Which means the cosmic order of things. What is the cosmic order of things?

To do no harm. Not to break the system that's already broken. Not to immerse ourselves into the system in a way that breaks us. Do no harm to others and do no harm to yourself. Do that which is beneficial to you and beneficial for others. At the very least, it doesn't cause harm to others. In the context of the Dhamma, in the context of practice, it is having loving kindness. If you can't have loving kindness, don't do anything that's going to cause people harm. Have compassion. If you can't have compassion, hold your tongue so you don't be cruel.

Hold yourself away from any kind of action that will cause further suffering for the person who's causing suffering to us. Once we have this, then our mind becomes more collected. We have sila. Now we have sila, and we have dana or generosity, and now we have samadhi or bhavana. What does that mean? Now we get into right effort, right mindfulness, and right collectedness. Right effort, we've already talked about. Four right efforts.

Letting go of the thoughts that bother us, that are unwholesome. So first we recognize them and let them go. First and second. Bringing up thoughts or bringing up states that uplift us, that bring concentration to the mind, that bring joy to the mind. This is the beautiful thing about the Dhamma. One of the most explicit things about the Dhamma is the Buddha always says, there needs to be joy in everything that you do in the Dhamma. And that joy arises from the joy of letting go. The ones you've let go, your mind, it relaxes.

It has relief. And there's joy in that. And we maintain the observance of that. The attention to that. That's the right effort. And we have right mindfulness, keeping the four foundations of mindfulness. It doesn't mean we have to keep trying to figure out, am I mindful or not? Once I come back to the present moment, I have right mindfulness.

I'm not trying to be perfecting it in such a way that I have to always be like this. Because the Buddha talks about it. He says just the bare awareness of what is arising constitutes as part of that mindfulness. And once I have that, then I can direct my mind towards an object. I can relax into the object.

And that is right concentration. All of this is the Dhamma that needs to be cultivated, that needs to be developed, that needs to be perfected for the cessation of suffering. This is the entire, it's the entire encyclopedia of the Buddha's teachings right here. He found it so important that he tells his students this three months before he passes away. Then the Lord said to the monks, And now, monks, I declare to you, all conditioned things are of a nature to decay. Strive on untiringly. I don't like this translation. It's a wrong translation, according to me. All conditioned things are of a nature to decay. All things that are conditioned are impermanent. That's it.

Strive on untiringly. That's not what he's saying here. He's saying be diligent towards the goal. That's what the actual translation should mean. When you look at the original Pali, that's what he's talking about. When you say strive untiringly, what does that mean? It gives notion that we have to try and try and try, to the effort in such a way that we crush our minds and all of these other things that are not the way of the path to awakening as per the Buddha.

So be diligent in your course of action towards the goal. That's the understanding. How do you be diligent? How do you become diligent? By following these 37 requisites. The Tathagata's final passing will not be long delayed. Three months from now, the Tathagata will take his final parinibbana. Thus the Lord spoke, the welfare having thus spoken, the teacher said this, ripe I am in years.

My lifespan has been determined. Now I go from you having made myself my refuge. This is an echo of one of the statements that Buddha has said, be an island unto yourself. What do we mean when we say be an island unto yourself? You can be like the hermit in the forest. If you don't have a community around you, if you don't have people that are supportive of your practice, just be an island unto yourself.

This is sometimes difficult on an emotional and spiritual level for many people because there is still that desire to have or that security to depend on others. You're not talking about depending on others in terms of material aspects but depending on others in terms of, am I doing the right thing? I need to know from another person, am I doing the right thing? No. As you do your experience, initially you may need a guide. Initially you may need somebody to walk you through this process. Fair enough, but as you develop your ability to see what is right and wrong through... Be untiring. Be diligent.

Mindful and disciplined. Disciplined meaning have consistency in what you do. Actually meditated. So I'm coming back to you now for these next 10 days, thinking I'm going to solve all my problems in these next 10 days. Consistency is key, even if it's for 30 minutes every day in the morning. Some of you might have heard the statement, eat that frog, right? Get the thing that is most challenging for you out of the way. If it is meditating, because meditation feels like a chore initially, and as soon as you get out of bed, or even while you're in bed, meditate for 30 minutes.

It will have an interesting difference in your days. And eventually, because you see the value and benefit of the practice, it will become a habit that you look forward to. And it will be like your coffee. You can't do without it. Be disciplined. Guarding the mind, your minds with well-collected thought. What kind of junk are you consuming on social media?

Or what kind of wonderful things are you picking up? It doesn't have to be just the suttas. It doesn't have to be just Dhamma talks. It can be whatever you hear about somebody's good fortune. You celebrate in that. Your mind becomes uplifted because of it. Every moment is an opportunity to see, am I picking up junk? Or am I mind becoming well-collected in what thoughts are present?

He who tireless keeps to law and discipline. In other words, keeps to the Vinaya. That's for the monastics. Keeps to the precepts. Keeps to the teachings. Leaving birth behind will put an end to woe. I don't know about you guys, but I do not want to be born again. I have no intention of being born in another life.

I'm 35 going on 36 and I already feel like I'm already 72. So I have no intention of coming back. Some of you, some of us are like, well, life is interesting. Life is good. Wonderful. Good for you. You have all the wonderful things that are going on. One day, all of that will turn to crap.

And then you'll have to see how do you deal with that suffering? If you haven't had suffering yet, I wish you all have enough suffering so that you get out from that haze, from that illusion, that mirage, and realize that there's more to life than just the things that we experience. The letting go. When we get invested in something, we take it personally. And that there is the hook for new becoming, for new being, for new levels of suffering.

And so we have the karma management system, which is the eightfold path to recognize what is present, what is not present in this moment. Let go whenever there is an identification and experience freedom right there and there. I think this is all that I have to say. Yes. Share some merit. David? Gotcha. May suffering once be suffering free and the fear struck fearlessly. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May the beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Thank you everyone. I'll see you around. Take care. Thank you.