Lightly edited transcript Filler words and caption errors removed by machine; the meaning is unchanged.
Delson reads and comments on MN 17, the Vanapattha Sutta, which describes when a monk should stay in a jungle thicket and when he should leave, depending on whether mindfulness and collectedness can develop and whether the requisites are available. He argues that romanticized hardship is not required for practice, and that comfort alone does not produce practice either, since the effort of letting go, which he links to the 6R's, is what establishes mindfulness. He closes with reflections on his own experiences, working at the edge of comfort, and spiritual ego.
Key points
- The sutta describes four situations in a jungle thicket: mindfulness and collectedness either fail or develop, and the requisites are either hard or easy to get, which determines whether a monk should leave or stay.
- Delson argues against romanticizing hardship, such as forest asceticism, fasting or sleeping outside, and says the Buddha's own six years of ascetic practice led to the middle way.
- Having everything provided does not by itself produce practice; the effort of letting go of the unwholesome and cultivating the wholesome, which he links to the 6R's, is what establishes mindfulness.
- When meditation is not going well from trying too hard, he suggests stepping away, for example walking by a lake, because the practice is about tranquility and trying to be tranquil defeats it.
- He suggests growth happens at the edge of one's comfort zone, that spiritual ego can be tested by how one responds to a teacher's blunt feedback, and that one should watch one's own motivation.
Suttas in this talk
Each opens the sutta on SuttaCentral.
Themes
Where this talk sits on the path
This talk speaks mostly to Beginning practice. It follows the thread of Sutta study series.
The path runs from Foundations to Arahant; read at any point along it.
Transcript
Introduction to the Jungle Thickets Sutta
Today we will be doing Majjhima Nikaya 17, Vanapattha Sutta, Jungle Thickets. Thus have I heard, on one occasion, the Blessed One was living at Savatthi in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's Park. There he addressed the bhikkhus thus. Venerable sir, they replied. The Blessed One said this. Bhikkhus, I shall teach you a discourse on jungle thickets. Listen and attend closely to what I shall say. Yes, venerable sir, the bhikkhus replied. The Blessed One said this. Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu lives in some jungle thicket. While he is living there, his unestablished mindfulness does not become established. His uncollected mind does not become collected.
His undestroyed taints do not come to destruction. He does not attend the unattained, or he does not attain the unattained supreme security from bondage. And also the requisites of life that should be obtained by one gone forth, robes, alms, food, resting place, and medicinal requisites are hard to come by. Bhikkhu should consider dust. I am living in this jungle thicket. While I am living here, my unestablished mindfulness does not become established and so on.
And I do not attain the unattained supreme security from bondage. And also the requisites of life are hard to come by. That bhikkhu should depart from that jungle thicket that very night or that very day, continue living there. So as far as I remember the sutta, there are four instances in which a bhikkhu is living in a jungle thicket.
Why the jungle is not hospitable
I don't know if any of you have been in a jungle thicket, but it is not specifically or particularly a hospitable environment. There's all kinds of critters and snakes and bugs. And depending on where you are, generally it will be very hot and humid. So I don't consider a jungle thicket, personally speaking, to be the best environment to meditate.
A lot of people may have this exotic idea about, or romanticize this idea about, oh, how wonderful would it be to go into the forests of India or go to Sri Lanka and meditate there. Well, you're going to have to deal with elephants and cobras and bugs and maybe the odd tiger here and there. So try establishing your mindfulness in that situation.
Try meditating in that situation. Come by when it comes to the four requisites. So in that case, it would be sensible to leave that area. Then he says here, a bhikkhu lives in some jungle thicket. While he is living there, his unestablished mindfulness does not become established. His uncollected mind does not become collected. His undestroyed taints do not come to destruction. He does not attain the unattained supreme security from bondage, yet the requisites of life that should be obtained by one gone forth are easy to come by. The bhikkhu should consider this, or should consider thus: I am living in this jungle thicket. While I am living here, my unestablished mindfulness does not become established. I do not attain the unattained supreme security from bondage.
Yet the requisites of life that should be obtained by one gone forth are easy to come by. However, I did not go forth from the home life into homelessness for the sake of robes, alms, food, resting place, and medicinal requisites. Moreover, while I am living here, my unestablished mindfulness does not become established. Security from bondage, having reflected thus, that bhikkhu should depart from that jungle thicket. He should not continue living there. So here is another example, or another possibility: someone goes into the forest, but they have their requisites. They have a place to stay. They have food. They have clothing or robes.
They have medicine, or whatever they need for medicines. This could be where they might be staying in the jungle thicket, but there is a path leading out to a village of some sort, or perhaps there is a caretaker there. Here the Buddha is saying it's great, you might be in a place. Again, this romanticized idea of, let me go to the foothills of the Himalayas. Well, let me tell you, it is an interesting thing to do. I've done that a few times. I can tell you from my own experience, when I was 16, 17, going into the foothills of the Himalayas, walking from Haridwar to Rishikesh, which is no joke.
It's at least three or four hours uphill. And then walking from there continuously, 20, 30, 40 kilometers a day, and then sometimes going into the forest and camping there or just resting there. You would rest, and there would be rain, and you had nothing but your clothing or a blanket to cover you from the rain. And that's not the best ideal conditions.
I would say the best ideal conditions were when we were in an ashram, or when we were in someone's house and there was hot food waiting for us and a hot shower. So don't discount the so-called necessities of life. If you want to do that and be an ascetic, go ahead and live out that fantasy, but you're going to see that it's not going to work out. In order for you to establish mindfulness, in order for you to meditate, look at Damasuka. Damasuka is a wonderful example. It has comfortable cabins, it's got a dining hall, it's got food prepared for you, it's got a great meditation hall. Everything is, thank God, air-conditioned, so when it's hot and humid you can retire into your cabin or go and meditate in the air-conditioned hall. So there's everything that you need over there, but what will you do once you have everything and you don't have your mindfulness established? You don't have your mind collected.
Right effort and the 6R's
You don't let go. You don't do the 6R's. Everything is provided for you. Everything is given unto you. And yet the effort is not made. The effort, here in very specific terms, is the right effort: the effort of letting go of the unwholesome and coming or generating into the wholesome, and coming to the wholesome and keeping that going. This is how mindfulness is established. This is how the mind becomes collected.
This is how the taints come to destruction. It's using the 6R's. That is the heart of the practice. A lot of people will foolishly come and say, I want to fast while I'm on retreat. Or I want to sleep outside, and all of these things. Try doing that for a few days; you're going to find your meditation is not going well. We must understand this: the Buddha has done this before as the Bodhisattva, and for him it was six years of that, six years of ascetic practice, just because of his karma. In accordance with the extra-canonical Jataka tales and other things, there the Bodhisattva made a comment about a previous Buddha, and for that reason he had to go through practices which were unfruitful, but it allowed him to see that there is a balance here. There is the middle path, that is the madhyama patipada, which means the middle way, the middle path.
And if you have your requisites and you're not able to establish mindfulness, you're not able to meditate, especially on retreat. I haven't done this on retreats this year, maybe even last year. But usually what will happen is I will say, why don't you go walk by the lake, or walk to the lake and spend some time there?
This is something that Bhante Vimalaramsi would prescribe to people, either because they weren't practicing for whatever reason. Either they're trying too hard, which means that they're becoming absorbed and too concentrated, or they're not doing the practice correctly. And so when you go to the lake or you take a walk, you're not practicing, because your mind is off the idea of this romanticized concept that this is what practice is.
And you start to become light in your mind, become light in your heart. And oftentimes people will have come to Bhante, and Bhante would say, how was your practice? And they said, I wasn't practicing. Actually you were, you just didn't realize it. You didn't realize that you didn't need to try so hard. The practice is about tranquility.
When requisites are easy to get
The moment you try so hard to be tranquil, you're not tranquil. But the moment you let go, you are practicing. That is the practice. And so he says, a bhikkhu lives in some jungle thicket. While he is living there, his unestablished mindfulness becomes established. His uncollected mind becomes collected. His undestroyed taints come to destruction. He attains the unattained supreme security from bondage, and also the requisites of life that should be obtained by one gone forth.
Robes, alms, food, resting place, and medicinal requisites are easy to come by. The bhikkhu should consider thus: I am living in this jungle thicket. While I am living here, my unestablished mindfulness has become established. I have attained the unattained supreme security from bondage, and also the requisites of life are easy to come by. That bhikkhu should continue living in that jungle thicket as long as life lasts. He should not depart. That's a very interesting statement, so let's get into that. Let me just get a drink of water here.
So in this case, the Buddha is saying that somebody is able to have access to the requisites, and it's easy for them to have their mindfulness established. Their mind can go into collectedness, and they're able to establish right effort, utilize the 6R's, for example, and come into the destruction of the taints. A smaller form of that is the destruction of the hindrances, so that your mind becomes well collected.
And then the mind attains that supreme security from bondage, which is what we would call Nibbana. And so if a person is comfortable there, if a person has access to the the Buddha prescribes, one can live there for as long as one can, as long as these things are taken care of. Now here we're going to see the Buddha talks about one who lives in dependence upon a certain village, or a certain town, or a certain city, or a certain country, or a certain person.
So let's go into the notes here, what Bhikkhu Bodhi says. He says the same pattern is applied in these verses to the village, town, city, and country. So here the pattern, as he says in the previous note: no progress, which means no practice and no progress, and the requisites are scarce, one should depart. No progress, and requisites are plentiful, one should depart. Progress and requisites are plentiful, one should stay. So let's say we've gone through all of these different categories in that same way. Now we're coming to what would happen when one doesn't have what one requires, and so the Buddha says that very night or that very day that bhikkhu should depart from that person without taking leave. He should not continue following him. So here he says without taking leave seems to be mistaken.
It should say after taking leave. That's apucha, which seems more fitting. before departing. In this case, all four cases apply here. Here, a bhikkhu lives in dependence upon a certain person, having reflected thus that bhikkhu should continue following that person. He should not depart from him. Here, a bhikkhu lives in dependence upon a certain person. In this case, there are resources and there is progress and there are enough, more than enough, resources and there's progress. In both cases, that bhikkhus should continue following that person as long as life lasts. He should not depart from him even if told to go away.
I don't know about that, but I wonder why the Buddha is saying that. He should not depart from him even if told to go away. In any case, that is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One's words. So there we are. This is a pretty short sutta and it just gives us some understanding of where to take refuge, where to go and take residence and where not to. And I think the most important part really is a balance. Everything is taken care of and you can continue your practice. I've had the good fortune when I was meditating in 2020 to have a caretaker who would give me my requisites, whatever I needed, once a week.
And of course, when things didn't work out and I couldn't stay in the cave, I was staying at his place. And so he was generous enough to let me stay there and continue my practice. In 2024, in the foothills of the Himalayas, I was in a place called Mukteswar. And there, my requisites were taken care of. And I was working on craving.
But ironically, for whatever reason, there was a lot of smoke in the forest and probably because of forest fires. And it started becoming uninhabitable. It was not great for the lungs. Ironically, I flew all the way to Crete, where I was invited by a student and finished my craving book in Crete. There, the requisites were plentiful.
There was even a swimming pool where you can swim and laze about and watch the sunrise and sunset. Those aren't exactly requisites, but those are comforts. And I was able to practice and finish the book. Anyway, does anybody have anything to say or any questions? Hey, I'll just comment. This sutta, I had not taken it quite. I had a different idea now. And the sutta kind of says, well, if you kind of freak out and you're fearful and all of that, then you should, you're not ready for it. But as you were adding, heat, humidity, bugs. This is a kind of idyllic idea that people want to go to the jungle, and this is kind of ingrained in us: that we have to go and become an ascetic or we will not get enlightened. We can't do it here. You can't do it at Saint Francis where there's all this great food and a lake, and you're going to walk around and what else?
The place is beautiful. It's impossible, but that's not right. You have everything that you need there. That's right. Since you have it, you don't need to worry about it. You don't have bugs bothering you. You don't have any of that. You can just sit quietly and watch the mind. And so this whole idea is, it's just not the right idea. Yeah. If people want to LARP, as we say, live action role play, as my generation might call it, and they want to do that, go camping. Go camping and do that, and then that's fine. And the other thing I would say is it is also very interesting to see the time in which the Buddha was teaching.
If he had come any time earlier, when mankind, when we as a species, were still living in the jungle, still doing all these things, it wouldn't be the best option. It seems interesting that he came into existence at a time when we were civilized, so to speak, where there was agriculture, where there were cities, there were towns, there were villages, there was an ability for people to till from the land, from the soil. And there was that sort of economy in which the bhikkhus were dependent upon the lay people. And lay people had the opportunity to exercise the generosity.
So there's something to be said about that, that Buddha comes into this life, into this eon or into this life at a certain time when civilization is there. We're living in the forest and all of these things because we're trying to survive. Now look at us. We have the comforts, as you rightly said, here at St. Francis and Damasuka.
We have the comforts of life. We all have access to many wonderful things. So it should be easier for us to practice. And I think what's going on is that survival brain, the brain that's always on guard, hasn't caught up to the reality that we don't need to worry about a tiger chasing us or a snake biting us or anything. And we project that onto, oh, I need to make this deadline or, oh no, what did they think of me or whatever it is. And we stress unnecessarily.
Aftermath and spiritual ego
So that's also something to think about. Hear you give a talk about the aftermath, what your mind was doing during this whole... I don't know if that was recorded, that talk that you and Bhante gave. Yeah, it was right after. I think David posted it, but it's unlisted, so maybe he can send a message. But yeah, it would be interesting to hear that from you while it's relatively fresh because I'm sure it's still happening. Yeah, that's a good point. One of the things I've been reflecting on is I've become more impatient with people. And what do I mean by that? I can't tolerate fakeness from people. One of the things that I realized is life is too short to tolerate people who are either fake or superficial, and that's whatever they are. If I'm judging them, that's one thing, but to that extent also, it's spirituality in general. I think when I reflect on my life as a spiritual practitioner and reflect on my life
teaching for these last six years, and then in the aftermath. I'll give you a short version of it, and I'm happy to just give an entire talk about it at some point. That's completely fine. Maybe next week we could do that, or the week after. But my point about this is, very often we utilize spirituality as another form of entertainment. There's a kind of spiritual ego, and in the aftermath, one of the things that I reflected upon was
To what extent do I want to satisfy other people's spiritual egos as a teacher? Sometimes we risk that by not really giving them the unvarnished truth because we're afraid that they will be hurt. But I think at this point, it's valid to be okay with that. benefit, or at least that's how I see it.
And what do people actually want? They want, they say they want freedom from suffering. They say they want to be free of mental suffering and they want to have awakening and all of these things. But I will say this, when I reflect back on what happened, when you are going to die, you really are not going to think about what jhana did I attain? How many techniques did I learn?
How many years and decades of spiritual practice did I do? When, and this is what I say to everyone, I hope all of you have the luxury of passing away in a comfortable bed, disaster, or somewhere which is totally unexpected. Because that will give you the luxury of reflecting and meditating, possibly, when this happens. But even then, it won't be about all of the spiritual attainments that satisfy the spiritual ego that you'll be looking at. And if you are, that's a time to reflect and let go.
What you'll probably be doing is saying, can I have one more moment of life? Can I have one more moment with my loved ones? Can I have one more moment where I can breathe freely? That's the reality, right? That's the reality. And so how we deal with that will be the real test of our practice. David. Not what I was originally going to comment on, but just to riff off of what you were just saying. I have a friend who's flatlined three times, and talking to him about what it's like to die. He says, 'Really good practice if you want to practice dying is just be laying there breathing. And then when you exhale, stop.'
And when you want to inhale, go and watch your mind, right? Because you're going to see the panic, the fear, the cravings. Right? It's just going to roar up for life. He said there's this: just sit there and don't breathe and know that it's not coming. I was like, okay. So I've tried to incorporate some time. Yeah, yeah, it's a good way. You're trying to simulate that. By the way, I'm so glad that you're okay. I just got back from holidays and I was reading my emails and saw what happened, so yeah, many blessings to you and Bhante. But with, I guess, kind of on the top of it, exposure therapy, trigger therapy, I'm a huge, huge believer in it. If we look at the Buddha's path, it was one never-ending, like those years, just an extension of one trigger after another, of letting go, of letting go, of letting go. And for sure, a lot of yogis can romanticize the ascetic practices.
I have scars on my ass through my days when I thought, oh, you shouldn't even use a cushion and just sit on the ground, not even kusa or grass or anything. Which, yeah, that's not the way to go. Take the cushion if you can. Wear a chair, even better. But our growth lies outside of our comfort zone. And so as long as we're in that comfort zone, we're not pushing that edge, right? And if you're finding your edge, to my mind, you're finding where resistance is, where you're still caught in some fashion or another. And that's your trigger to know to keep moving in that direction. But be mindful to not push too far. Scientists like to literally put a percentage of one to four percent, for, like, Stephen Kotler in his book Superhuman, and measuring how athletes continue to push the limits of performance just a little bit, little bit, little bit.
And so, us as well, we need to be mindful of where our edge is, when we're sitting on our laurels and we're just being comfortable, and when we're pushing too far, right? And it's like, hey, we need to dial back. Maybe the four-hour sit isn't something you should be aspiring to, right? And maybe it's just you're feeding your ego by doing that, right? But really, it's only us as the yogi looking inside and seeing in our mind our motivation, our intention, that we really know. And for sure, we can look to the teacher, to the guru, for validation, to pet our spiritual ego and to let us know, oh, yeah, you're doing great, you're on the right path, and see how we handle it when they give us the stick.
And they're blunt with us, like you were kind of contemplating there, that line of being a teacher and a guide to people. And when do you give them the stick to let them know, hey, you need to get going and take your foot off the gas. And really, that's the job of mindfulness for all of us. Where are we at in our practice, in this moment, being our only practice, and always being attentive to that. So, yeah, I guess I highly encourage pushing the edge. Like an example of that, next weekend I'm currently, right now, at the gym, because next weekend I'm going to be doing three Spartan races in two days, so 23 kilometers, 10 kilometers and five kilometers, and the only reason I do this stuff is because of the place I have to go to in my mind while doing this. I don't like running. I don't like having to carry huge heavy things and whatnot.
But I know that in life, I very well might be asked to, if they all of a sudden say, hey, the Russians are coming and I've got to help grandma and I've got to help people and whatnot, right? I'm not a monk who's going to be in the forest and just sitting there and I guess, oh, if they kill me, they kill me. I've chosen the path of being involved in the arena. But that being said, you can't lose your balance of mind when you're in the arena.
And so doing those practices, like cold exposure, sitting in a cold plunge chair where you're just a quantumist, there's no reactivity in the mind, there's no aversion, and you find that smile and that joy. Same when you're, mile 18, and you're like, your body wants to shut down and you have to go to that place in your mind or just complete letting go and knowing that you can and it's safe and there's nothing to fear. And when you push through that and then you get that confidence, right, in the practice of letting go and knowing that, yeah, you can push through those walls, and there's always another level, another level.
Yeah, it's fun. That's my two bits on it. Push the limit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear struck fearless be. 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 beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu. Thank you everyone. I'll see you around. Bye.