Day-9 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong

This isn't so much about the practice, but it's about the talk today. And I just want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for this time we've had and that which will continue. To the talk. I really, really deeply appreciated today's talk. It dissolved so many long-held puzzlements, and I don't have a question out of it, but it was really quite a profound listening for me, so thank you. Thank you. I have a question regarding precepts. If one wants to follow eight precepts, entertainment in terms of entertainment, is that also include watching lectures on educational content, reading, like anything, any video that you watch related to educational content?

It's not like a TV show. You study something like that. I see nothing wrong with that. If it's something related to education, related to your profession, or related to something that you want to build your knowledge about, I see nothing wrong with it insofar as you don't have any mental attachments towards that knowledge. Entertainment, in my view, would be things that excite the senses, excite the six sense bases, and provide sensory pleasure, which then has the tendency of the mind to crave for it. And then that creates clinging, and so on and so forth. So I see nothing wrong with it.

Thank you. Good morning, Delson. Good morning, friends. I would also like to express to Kuhn and to Bhante Ananda and to my fellow retreatants for this retreat, which has been very valuable to me and inspiring. And there's no end. That's a full stop, actually, at the end. So thank you. I have a question, which is to do with the continuation of the meditation.

And we've touched a little bit on questions of precepts. I've also been reading The Eight Virtues, and it makes a reference to eating at improper times. Yesterday I ate late and then meditated, and it was a challenging meditation. So I'm just wondering, going forward, what that means for a non-retreat schedule. You have to find what works for you. Essentially, I believe eating at improper times is really eating at a time which would not make sense, like eating before bed, for example, having an evening meal, which could cause certain imbalances in the neurotransmitters.

when you want to meditate for the next morning and so on and so forth. So it's really about experimenting with your own mind and body and to see what works for you, and everything that helps to keep your mind in balance is what's more important. So eating at different times depends upon your own schedule. There are people who have different waking schedules, for example, and different sleeping schedules.

Your daytime is somebody else's nighttime, or your nighttime is somebody else's daytime. What really would be the improper time to eat there? It's more about having things in moderation, making sure that you have a balance in terms of how you have your meals. And generally just don't eat before you go to sleep. Try not to eat of the daytime before you go to sleep if you maintain that kind of schedule because of your work. I have also a question regarding the practice. Like, are there certain things outside of the retreat that one can do to support one's practice in terms of, I don't know, in today's time, like not using the phone so much, or not having, like, stimuli so much, or yeah, if there are things that, like, you can recommend? Number one, stop watching the news. There's no benefit in watching the news right now. If you need to watch the news, watch it just for the sake of being informed of what's happening in the world. Like that, try to maintain

obviously your precepts, try to maintain a lifestyle in alignment with the eightfold path, which means maintaining right speech, maintaining right action, maintaining right livelihood primarily. And obviously you want to apply the four foundations of mindfulness at every moment as much as possible, because that's going to help you not only be able to understand where your mind is but also be able to develop your enlightenment factors, be able to, using right effort, eradicate the five hindrances in your daily life. And going back to right intention or effective choice, where you see that if there is something that is coming in the way of being unwholesome, you immediately recognize it and let it go. So you have the intention of letting go of things that would cause harm to yourself and to others, and maintain an attitude of loving kindness with everybody that you meet and interact with.

So all of this will really translate into a better meditation practice for yourself when you go and sit down for meditating. Thank you. I have a question there. If I want to talk to other people about what kind of practices that I've been doing, and most people are used to, at least where I'm from, to impression style practice, and then it would lead to things like don't bring it up too much, or yeah, it's kind of an odd middle ground with the bringing up the feeling. How would you say, what will be a sort of wise introduction?

Let your actions and let your thoughts and let your speech speak for itself in the way you behave. And when people notice that you are coming from a loving-kind attitude, they'll want to know what is it that you're doing. inclined to, you can talk about your practice and tell them this is what you do rather than just bringing it up out of nowhere. I mean, if the conversation turns to where, you know, what is it that you do in terms of your spiritual practice or you just are with friends and they're sharing their different practices and you feel inclined to, you're more than welcome to do that. But essentially, just let your actions speak for yourself.

Thank you. And seriously, it really helps a lot of people like me who write many things, but yeah, things don't work so. It's in the end all about how we understand things, and if that's going to help the lifestyle, that's the best. So thank you so much. Thank you. With regard to the, as you referred to a few days ago, how the breath becomes very, very shallow and light, that's a little challenging to other. I don't have a problem with that, but I find that I want to, my idea of balancing is going out and doing some more than just walking, but doing something to really exercise the lungs and oxygen. Could you comment, please? Yeah, I know one individual who meditates while they're cycling, for example. So if you want, you can meditate while you're at the gym. Just maintain your mindfulness, maintain your ability to see where your mind is at, where the body is at, and if you want to bring in one of the brahmaviharas, like loving kindness

you can still do it. The whole purpose of doing the walking meditation is an exercise to see that you can actually bring this in with whatever you're doing, whether you're eating your food, whether you're driving a car, whether you're at the gym, whatever it might be. So it's good to, obviously, get some exercise for the maintenance of the body.

But while you're doing it, you could still be mindful of mindfulness while doing it. Thank you. I didn't know there was a talk today. I didn't find it. Oh, I think what happened was you were one day early, Bhante. So I think when it was day zero, you started with day one. You're already well versed with the practice, so you don't really require an introduction to practice. So there was no time. I was wondering. Good. Good.

Thank you. And well, thank you for all your work and your wonderful guidance. Very appreciated. And it's quite wonderful to see it all happening, everybody here. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu. Thank you. Can I ask one question? Yes, go ahead. Very simple. We are doing the five precepts, mostly daily life. Sometimes, you know, that we have the big day, something like the full moon day or something like that. We're doing the eight precepts once in a while. So we go back to five precepts. Precept that's okay, or always keep it, the five days, that the how like is there a little different? So I cannot speak from experience because I don't follow that process of following the eight precepts on the full moon day and so on. So I would ask Bhante Ananda to comment on that, please.

Well, if I understand the question correctly, this is talking about the observance day, Upasatha. So usually, if that is the desire of the person, but 2,600 years ago, they were working on the moon calendar. So nowadays it doesn't work so well because people work for five days and then they have two days off. So that's how it works now, the solar calendar.

And so the equivalent of that is every weekend, or every week, or every couple of weeks, a person would take a full day for practice, for example. That was the usual practice that would be done every quarter moon, or every full moon or new moon. And take on, if you can, if you have, if you're lucky enough, you live in a Buddhist country or you have a monastery close by, you can even go there, take the virtues. And if that is of any interest to you, you can even take the refuges again and have a whole day.

Usually the Upasatha virtues are the eight virtues. So that would include not eating after noon, and not wearing any necklaces, jewelry, anything that beautifies the body, and no high luxurious beds and seats. But really, the most important in this is really to have a day to maybe go listen to a talk on the Dhamma. We have internet and all these things. YouTube is a pretty good place. have a monastery and people that you have good faith in and that you love and respect, you can go there, and that's a wonderful thing to do, and practice meditation for most of the day.

And that's a pretty good Upasatha. Thank you. I think Bhante Ananda just partly answered the question I had. The other part of the question was, after this retreat, what's your sense of when it's wise to do another retreat, and whether the sensible thing is to just do the same retreat, because obviously we will relearn and see things in a new way anyway? So it's really to get a sense of the timings of retreats and schedule of retreats. So usually, if you've already done one retreat, you can do another retreat maybe every other retreat, and what I mean by that is give the opportunity for, let's say, other people who want to join in on the retreat who haven't done so before, so that they have an opportunity. In terms of your own practice, actually, what I'm going to be doing and I've already told the people for the morning interviews is since this is the last day, I'm going to be making notes on their experience and their practice for the retreat.

And then write up a little bit of a summary report for each individual, making recommendations on what they should be doing in terms of their practice, how long they should be practicing, what their object should be, so that you still have some kind of a pattern of practice off retreat. Thank you. All my gratitude to whole sangha, teacher, team, and whole meditator to have shared this retreat. Thanks. I'd also like to thank everybody here for attending the retreat, and I'd like to thank especially Bhante Ananda for his wisdom here, his participation and his presence, and for Khun, who organized all of this. He really is the backbone of the infrastructure in organizing and scheduling and making sure that everything is working as smoothly as possible.

Of course, behind him is also another team of people, volunteers, who are spending their time giving to the Dhamma in the way of helping organize this and other things related to the foundation. So thank you everybody for attending. Thank you Khun. Thank you Bhante Ananda. Thank you Khun. Thank you Bhante Ananda. Thank you Delson. We still have a few minutes. So if anybody has a question, they can ask questions.

We'll wait for another, let's say 20, 30 seconds. And then I would request Bhante Ananda to essentially officially close the Q&A with a few words and share some air with us. Thank you. Is it time? Well, one of the topics that I like to bring up at the end of a retreat is, like I mentioned yesterday, beautiful friendship.

In Pali, this is called kalyanamitta. In many suttas the Buddha underlines the importance of surrounding ourselves with wise people, with people that will support us in math in this teaching, as but I think everybody here is doing right now. But when we are in a retreat environment, it's always a little easier. We have good conditions and supporting conditions, not too many rough edges around, so we can practice smoothly.

But going back is going back to all of the things, all of the challenges of life. And the Buddha, once Ananda, who was his assistant, came to him and said, Bhante, surely this is at least half the holy life, that beautiful friendship, wise friendship, wise association. And the Buddha said, don't say that, Ananda, don't say that. It is the whole of the holy life. It is so important because it is the reason why this whole practice is there.

We owe this to the Buddha himself, and if the Buddha wasn't our kalyanamitta, our spiritual friend, our very compassionate teacher, in the first place, there wouldn't have been this teaching pointing out wholesome states, unwholesome states, developing the wholesome, abandoning the unwholesome, understanding that generosity is in fact, we are the first ones to benefit from it, and to take every opportunity that we have to perform generosity of mind, of speech and body, physical. And the Buddha often praised generosity so much, but not only material. In fact, what's the highest generosity? Is by far mental development and cultivating a loving, wholesome mind and learning to embody this into our lives. And that is what really tells us if what we've practiced has brought us some fruits, and that even giving to an animal, the Buddha said, will come back to us a hundred times.

An unvirtuous person, a human being, will come back to us a thousand times. And a virtuous person, a hundred thousand times. And then he says, what then to say of a stream enterer, or somebody that understands the importance of generosity, of virtue, of cultivating love, compassion, forgiveness, and wisdom? And these states are strengthened by wisdom. And so one who surrounds oneself with wise company, wise friends, that stays with this wholesome supporting pool of people can be expected, in fact, to take on, keep practicing and to keep holding on to virtue, keep practicing right effort, relaxing the tension, the distractions, not taking all the situations so personal, just taking a step back and seeing how everything is calm and smiling. And when we take ourselves a little too personal, a little too important,

maybe just smile at how mind is crazy sometimes. And take every opportunity that we get to radiate love and compassion. And with wise friendship, we can also be expected to develop in wisdom and to continue this path, the traps of this world, where we might be tempted to do some things or others that are not so skillful sometimes, but to remember the beauty and the depth and the happiness of the Dhamma and the bliss of the Dhamma that is cultivated by the wise and

delighted in by the wise in so many ways. This mental development, this samadhi through love and joy and release, is quite blissful and brings a lot of happiness and upliftment in our lives. And so, to remember that, and to remember that it always pays off to do good for ourselves and for everybody else. This is a whole, so we're all together in this. So I wish you a very happy return to your lives, to everything that you will be doing in the near future, and hopefully Delson's wisdom helped you get deeper and bring your release and happiness and understanding of the Dhamma to either greater level that you can apply and help others with it also in your own lives.

In Pali, there is this short sentence that we say: simply saying that the real way, the true way of paying real homage to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, in accordance with the Dhamma. And so that is the greatest way of paying homage to the teachers in the past, the present teachers, the people around you. And so that is what I wish for you.

And perhaps we can share our merits, great merits, on this retreat. Should I wait for the image to come up or? Good. 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 these merits that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. And earth devas and nagas of mighty powers, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. My deepest anumodana, rejoicing in your merits, rejoicing in all the goodness of your actions, all of you, and special to Khun, who's in the background also driving this whole thing. Thank you.