Oct 19,2024 Retreat: Last Day Talk w/Delson Armstrong

Last day today, final day. And I just want to give you guys some little tips and tricks that you can do for your meditation practice. But more importantly, what you should be doing off retreat anyway. One of the things I emphasize a lot is what's known as sila. Sila is the foundation. It literally means the bedrock. It's the rock. It's the foundation for everything. And sila is essentially having ethical living, having an ethical life. Keep the five precepts. This is very important to understand. When you keep the five precepts, your mind remains clear. It remains guilt-free. It remains blameless. It remains happy. Anytime you do break a precept, what happens? Your mind is...

Restless. Your mind is disturbed. And when you break a precept, your mind is unable to meditate. Or it's very difficult to meditate. The very first thing he talks about is ethics. He talks about the benefits of ethics, the benefits of generosity, the benefits of being wholesome and having wholesome thoughts. A good life and having a good afterlife. So in his talks to the lay people, what he would say is, through ethics and generosity you then have a good life, and through that good life you can attain heaven. That was what was on their minds. They've got heaven on their minds, like the lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar say: heaven on their minds. But there is more than just heaven.

There's more than just this good life. And then he would go into the deeper aspects of meditation practice and go into what it means to meditate and what are the different levels or stages of meditation. These are the jhanas. And then finally he talked about liberation. It just depends on you. What do you want out of your life? How do you want to live your life? How do you want to choose the kind of mind that you want on a daily basis? The choice is always yours in every moment. And this is the crux of the entire Dhamma. The choice that is made in every moment. Do you choose to be unwholesome? Do you choose to take what seems to be the comfortable and easy way out, just because maybe until this point, the brain has been addicted to short-form dopamine-triggering experiences?

Upset, it's easier to lash out. It's easier to indulge in something that is pleasing and pleasurable to the senses, but it's more long-lasting and more comforting to recognize and let go of indulging in those things. Not because there's some high-handed judge sitting up there judging you for what you do. That's not the point of sila. Sila is all about essentially the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's about what is beneficial to you and beneficial to others. That's why the Buddha always talks about this. When you, you know, Majjhima Nikaya 19, excuse me, the two kinds of thoughts. He says, is it beneficial and harmless to me, or is it unbeneficial and harmful to me?

Is it beneficial and harmless to others, or is it unbeneficial and harmful to others? So find that which is beneficial to you and is beneficial for others, or at the very least, does not harm others. So the idea is to take that into account. Why? Because this is part of right view, the understanding of kamma. Kamma is not some mystical process. Kamma is basically give and take. You might not see that right away, but actually, if you really pay attention, you can, because even if you don't see the reactions or the consequences of your actions immediately in the outside world, you will see it in your mind. That is kamma. When you break a precept, how do you feel?

That's kamma. That's the immediate response that the mind has to breaking a precept. When you miss a meditation session, how do you feel? That's kamma. When you fail to see through reality, or see reality itself, which is that this process that I'm going through now is conditioned, and therefore it is impermanent, therefore it's not worth holding on to, because it's a transient kind of happiness, and therefore it's not me, mine, or myself. Why do we say that it's not me, mine, or myself? Because the Buddha never talked about no self, but neither did he say that there is a self. All he said was

Let's say there is a self. That idealization of what that self is, is sat-chit-ananda. That is the usual way that the people during that time, and even now in certain Indic traditions, talk about it. Sat-chit-ananda. Sat is existent, self-existing, independent. Chit is essentially conscious awareness. Ananda is bliss. But not just any kind of bliss. It is a bliss that is super mundane, otherworldly, transcendental bliss. That is the nature of the self. So the Buddha said, all right, let's use this as your parameters, and look at all of our experiences in life. Right here, right now. Look at the body, look at the sensations, the relationships, the people, the perceptions, the concepts that we've learned and picked up and developed in our minds.

The intentions, choices we made, decisions we've made. The awareness itself that's tied to one experience and the other. When you truly look at them, what do you see? They're transient. They keep changing. They're always in flux. So they're dependent, not independent. They're impermanent. And therefore, because they're transient, they are not true, long-lasting happiness. They're not ananda. So they cannot be seen as me, mine, or myself, or belonging to any kind of a self. This is how to understand self. And this is how you see it in your daily life. Try to see that every day when you wake up. Everything I have right now will go away one day. Everything that is here will change in some way.

And therefore, the mind lets go of taking things personally. It's an impersonal process. This is panna. This is wisdom. This is the fruit of the practice. And the result of this wisdom is a deeper kind of intuition. What you have done in this retreat is samadhi. Cultivated samadhi. Essentially, that's the focal point. What is samadhi? Samadhi is meditation. Samadhi is collectedness of mind. What do you need for an effective meditation? What do I mean by effective? Effective for the purpose of achieving nibbana. For those of you who have read A Mind Without Craving, one of the first edition copies, the Eightfold Path is seen as the effective path. Not because we're looking for efficiency in our daily lives and things like that.

It's because it's the most effective methodology for the purpose of liberating the mind. So right samadhi, right meditation, is made up of a few components. Four primary components are required. Attention. What is attention? Attention is the most valuable currency in this world. It's so important to understand this, especially now in today's reality. And the cool thing about attention is it's not like the U.S. dollar.

It doesn't diminish in value year after year. You can actually build it up. But it depends on how you choose to spend your attention, how you choose to invest your attention. In today's world, we have social media, we have YouTube, we have all kinds of things that are there to pull our attention in different directions. As a result, we have something known as continuous partial attention. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can multitask. But in reality, we can only do one thing at a time. And so what do we do? We spread our attention too thin. We're not only listening to this talk, but we're thinking about an email that we wrote last week.

We're thinking about what am I going to have for dinner or breakfast, wherever you are in the world. There's all kinds of things that are going on. But aside from that, even in the tasks that we do, while we're writing the email, then the phone starts lining up and we see what the message is there. And then something else happens, and then something else happens, and then something else happens. And so our attention is spread out. This spread-out attention is not useful for meditation. It's not helpful. You have to learn how to collect your attention. And this is what you've been learning to do with the practice. You've been learning how to collect your attention.

You've been learning how to invest your attention wisely, right? Do you want to invest in these so-called get-rich-quick schemes where you have immediate rewards from looking at this, that, or the other? Or do you want to invest in something that is long-lasting, in something that enables you to have peace, so that you have enough of a savings when it comes to your attention? And it's a matter of when you wake up, what do you do first thing in the morning? Do you reach for your phone? Look at all the alerts that are waiting for you? Or do you wait a while, lie in bed and collect yourself, collect the mind? See where the mind is.

What is the mind doing? Is it looking forward to the day, the things that it needs to do? Or is it right here in the present moment? Here I am, awake. Here is another day. How do I choose to spend this first five minutes of the day? Do I choose to have gratitude? Do I choose to have loving kindness? Do I choose to have compassion? Or do I choose to, all right, let's get to work. Let's do this. Let's do that, right? And then create restlessness for myself. Slow things down. That's the paradox. That's the irony. In slowing things down, you get more things done. The more you hasten, the less things you get done.

So this is what you do, and this helps with the attention. Now, if attention is the thing that you're paying towards the object, this is the analogy that I like to use. And actually, what I'm talking about is in a book I'm currently writing, right? Which is a simple understanding of meditation. It's a very simple guide to meditation. And this is what I talk about, these four components. And the analogy that I use is: imagine you are watching a performance on stage, and the spotlight is the attention. The performer is your object of meditation. Where the spotlight goes is dependent upon the man or the woman who is the technician guiding the spotlight.

That's your intention. Where do you choose to pay attention? The stage manager is your mindfulness. Stage manager is making sure, is the guy doing his work properly? Is the performer there? Or are they missing their beat? What's going on? This is mindfulness. Mindfulness is made up of two components. Sati, which is to be here, present, right now. And sampajanya, which means to have clear comprehension of where mind's attention is at all times. So mindfulness means to check in with the mind. Where are you? Are you okay? Are you collected? Are you disturbed? What's going on? This is the stage manager's duty. And so this is how you use mindfulness.

Collectedness is a result of when the attention continues to be on its object. It's the performance itself. Do you want to have a good performance or do you want to have a terrible performance? That's dependent upon the collectedness. That collectedness is dependent upon skillful methodology. That is right effort. Effort is the script supervisor making sure that the person remains sticking to the script and not forgetting their lines, they're not missing their beat, and so on. Right? And so if they are, they make adjustments. This is what you do with the 6R's, the right effort. If you remember these four keys to meditation, you will have an effective process of meditating.

But first, you need the generosity. Second, you need the sila. Then the meditation comes. And when you have all of these components all together, you can not only just meditate, but also perform any task easily. Because meditation is one thing, but living your life is another. What's the point of just meditating an hour a day, two hours a day, three hours a day? You're not having that collectedness, that jhanic state, that mind that is free of disturbance, out in your daily life. Especially for people who are non-monastics, you need a balance in your life. Arguably, even with monastics, I can't say much for them because I'm not one. But all I can say is there is always balance.

Concentrate too much is only going to make your mind hard and stern and inflexible. The key is to be able to adapt to the world outside and your daily life. How do you deal with challenges? The meditation will guide you in that because it sharpens the wisdom. That's the panna. And that wisdom informs intuition. How do you use intuition? You ask the mind, what is appropriate in this moment without any attachment to an outcome, without trying to analyze or trying to contemplate what is the right outcome or what is the right decision to be made? Let go of all of that. When you let go of all of that, intuition arises. From that intuition, you have spontaneity.

Are spontaneous in the moment because not one situation has one exact answer. It will be dependent upon the people around you. It will be dependent upon the person you're dealing with. It will be dependent upon the situation itself, based on the place, based on the time, and so on. So to say that you will learn it by rote and you'll know, for this situation, this is required. For this situation, this is required. No. You have to be flexible.

You have to be able to see what is required, and that requires spontaneity. And that spontaneity is a result of intuition. That intuition is a result of wisdom. That wisdom is a result of meditation. That meditation is a result of ethics, ethical living. You have now the tools. You know the different objects of meditation that are available to you. Utilize them whenever, however you want. Not one size fits all. Maybe one day you require forgiveness. Maybe another day you require loving kindness. Maybe another day yet you require equanimity. Use your intuition. When you sit down for meditation, relax and ask the mind, what does it feel like right now? That is the intuition. That's how you prompt intuition.

Nowadays, we have ChatGPT and Gemini and all these different AI platforms. But what use are they if you can't give them the right prompt? So what's the prompt here? Just asking, what do you need right now? And then let go and see what comes up and then enter the meditation with that. Forgiveness. Utility of forgiveness is not about the other person. Utility of forgiveness is to find peace in your mind. To be able to accept it happened. And move on. For your own peace. Because that's the only thing that matters in this world. Is how peaceful is your mind. How easily are you able to let go. they are. What is the utility of loving kindness?

Loving kindness is being a friend to yourself first and a friend to the world. That's what the word, the root word of loving kindness is. Metta, metri, which means to be friendly. What does it mean to be a friend to yourself? The same kind of advice you would give your best friend, give it to yourself and follow it. Sometimes we're wonderful with the people who are close around us and we give the best advice to them. But we're terrible judges with ourselves. Be a friend to yourself. What is the utility of compassion? Recognizing that suffering in ourselves and realizing that that suffering is present in other beings as well. You're more accepting of the situation as it is.

You don't respond with cruelty. What is cruelty? Cruelty is seeing the suffering in another person, reacting in such a way that you add to their suffering. But recognizing your own suffering and how it would feel, you have compassion. And that compassion is a genuine wish that may this person, may this being who is suffering, be free of that suffering. People arguing. What do you do? You radiate loving kindness to them. You radiate compassion to them. You radiate equanimity to them. What is the utility of equanimity? I'll get to that. What is the utility of the joy? It's to be able to celebrate in other people's happiness. The ability to celebrate life. Oftentimes people think that Buddhism is a life-denying kind of tradition.

From the outside, it looks like, yeah, maybe that's what it is. No. Oftentimes people misquote that. The Buddha says life is suffering. No, no, no. There is suffering in life. But there's also happiness. There's also joy. There's also connection. There's also celebration. There's also the ability to enjoy each other's problems. presence. Enjoy your family. Enjoy your friendships. Enjoy the things around you. The Buddha has talked about this beautiful friendship. Part of that beautiful friendship, kalyana mitta, part of that beautiful friendship is to celebrate in people's happiness and their success. That's the utility of empathetic joy. What is the utility of equanimity? Equanimity helps to calm the mind down. Equanimity here, the word equanimity comes from the word upekkha or upeksha in Sanskrit.

And that is related to, in some sense, or the opposite of, in some sense, the word upeksha. What is upeksha? Upeksha is expectation. Things have to go a certain way. To a certain standard, the people around me have to be a certain way, and the world around me has to be a certain way. These are my expectations of myself, my people, and the world. And if it doesn't match up with my expectations, what happens? I experience suffering. So upeksha, upekkha, equanimity, is to let go of those expectations. The quality of upeksha is a mind that is collected and calm and tranquil. And there is a wish that may all beings be calm, may all beings be collected, may all beings feel this peace I feel in this moment.

That is equanimity. And you can do that for each of the four brahmaviharas. May all beings experience happiness. May all beings experience freedom from suffering: loving kindness. May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings experience the liberation from suffering: compassion. May all beings experience joy. May they celebrate in their happiness: may I celebrate in their happiness: empathetic joy. May I be calm and collected and equanimous. May all beings experience peace, tranquility, and calm: equanimity. And this is why I've given to most of you this advice: that when you get your quiet mind and the mind is waiting, waiting is another word for craving, and samsara is made up of all kinds of waiting. You're waiting in line to get your money. You're waiting in line to be checked in at the hotel. You're waiting in line to be checked in for your flight. You're waiting watching your food rotate in the microwave for one or two minutes so that it heats up. All of that is samsara, waiting, waiting for the doctor.

Why do you do that in the meditation? Why wait for something? Why not be right here and enjoy what's going on? And so the deterrent for that waiting, the antidote for that waiting is the upekkha, is the equanimity. So whenever you notice that, what do I tell you? Go back to equanimity, radiate that. If you do this, what's going to happen? You're going to experience disenchantment. From that disenchantment, you're going to experience dispassion. What is the disenchantment? The disenchantment says, I've had enough of waiting. Come what may, I'm okay with whatever's going on. I've had enough. There's no aversion there. It's just like, okay, this is enough. What is dispassion? It's a Teflon mind. Whatever comes, the mind remains unaffected.

It's disengaged. It remains unaffected. From that dispassion comes liberation. What is that liberation? Letting go. Plain and simple. It's letting go. Every time you let go of your hatred, every time you let go of your anger, every time you let go of grief, you experience liberation. What's the utility of a quiet mind? Everywhere you go. Quiet mind is not just available to you in neither perception nor non-perception. Quiet mind is the silent witness. It's the notion or the experience of the silent witness. When you come here into the present moment, you just let go of looking at anything externally. Even looking at the thoughts in the mind. And you're just observing the process. And in being this observer, the mind quiets.

Now, maybe not altogether quiet, but there is a space. And this is where you are in the eye of the storm. The storm is the storm of all kinds of thoughts, experiences, and so on. But you are in the eye. You are calm. You are collected. There is this quietness, a quiet confidence that's there. So you can use this anytime. Just let go of the observer. Let go of the experiencer. Let go of the thing that thinks that it knows. Let go of that and be in the process that in the seeing there is only the seeing. In the hearing there is only the heard. In the thinking there is only the think. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized.

Just this is the way to the end of suffering. You can do this anytime. You have it now. And you can utilize it. So, have a consistent practice. Make sure you have a consistent practice. Keep a routine of practice. Make sure that you're able to stick to that routine. More than quantity, more than the length of the session, it's the quality. What does it mean? How deep can you go? Does it mean how concentrated can you become? How deep can you go means how much can you let go? I would argue a good meditation is an active meditation, because it allows you to let go of a lot more so that you can get to that deeper state.

Any meditation is a good meditation. And especially in today's world, where everybody is so busy, having even half an hour to sit, you should prize that half hour. You should prize that one hour instead of saying, oh, now I have to meditate. No, no, I don't have to meditate. I get to meditate, to gather my thoughts and collect them and let go and show my mind how it works, and I get to awaken my intuition. So I think that's enough for you guys now. I've been giving you all kinds of things, and I think this is a good recap of stuff, so I'm going to open it up for questions, if anybody has any.

How do you do this? No, no. This is... Okay. Questions? No questions? Really? This is the first. I have a question, Nelson. Can you hear me okay, Nelson? Yes, go ahead. I have a question. This is about the radiating metta practice. I don't remember where I read or whether I misread, but they say when you radiate metta, it's mostly to beings, which is living beings, but to your ancestors or if you are doing it. For example, my parents, anumodana, you share merits there. Is this something that's how the practice is, that really when you do metta, it's only for living beings, and merits is for sharing it for folks to anumodana? So initially for beginners, what do we say?

Find somebody who is alive. The reason is because you don't want to go through that process of grief and all of those things initially, because your mind might not be collected enough to deal with the loss of people that you've lost. But here's an interesting thing. No one is actually dead. Right? No one is actually dead. They've just moved on, and now they have a different life somewhere else.

So our ancestors, our relatives and so on, when we share merit with them, totally fine. When we share loving kindness with them, totally fine. But after a certain level, where you have enough equanimity, you have enough collectedness, you have enough ability to see through that process. As to whether they get it or not, well, some people have done it before, and it's very sparse in terms of the stories of people who've done it, but they've done it and they've gotten maybe a hint or clue from their loved ones who passed on. Maybe they appear in their dream, or they appear in some way, or there's some kind of synchronicity that happens to let them know everything is okay, or whatever it is.

So, yeah, there is a validity to doing something like that. Okay. Thank you. I have a question. Yeah. Particularly the aspect of not acting in a way that harms somebody. I'm thinking about, well, there are different contexts in life where you have choices that are trade-offs, and no matter what you do, somebody is going to be harmed. How do you do that in the wise way, or a karmically neutral way, I guess? Or, yeah, that's the question. This is a good question, because you know, that's something that even some of the monks have struggled with.

And that's why you had other schools of thought that said we have to be as harmless as possible. But there's always going to be some kind of collateral damage, for lack of a better word, where we make certain choices. But that's why the Buddha said it's all dependent upon our intentions. I know there's that saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And that's one way of looking at it, because people will say, well, I intended to be good, but then the consequence was this happened. But really, if you think about it, it is really our choices. If our intention is to be as harmless as possible, and yet there are situations where somebody is harmed, that was not our intention. If you can genuinely say that, then you're on the right track. But it is based on the situation and circumstances.

On that note, I heard Bhante Vimalaramsi actually once allude to his understanding that the Buddha was not a vegetarian. Yeah. Can you maybe speak to that a little bit? Yeah. So for the monastics, what he said was, here we are as monastics. And at the time of the Buddha and so on, there were all kinds of different ways of diets, let's say, restrictions. For example, the Jains were all vegetarian, except they didn't eat garlic or any root vegetables, because that had an effect on when you pull it out, it stirs the ecosystem of whatever insects and different things that are living in the ground. And other people were not vegetarians, and so on.

And so for the Buddha, what he said was, we have to just accept everything that is given unto our bowl. With the exception of one thing, and that's in the Jivaka Sutta. He said, you can accept meat as long as you know that it was not killed for you. Right. Or I should say, you can accept meat under these three.

In any circumstance, except for these three, that you suspect or know that it was killed for you, that you saw the animal or heard the animal being slaughtered, was giving it to you is saying that I especially prepared this particular meat and I killed the animal for this meat for you. I might be mistaken on the third one, but if you go back to the Jivaka Sutta, those are, I think, the three main things. So for the Buddha it was like trying to make it easier for everybody who wanted to give merit, who wanted to earn merit by giving to the monastics, by not being picky and choosy about what they could eat and what they couldn't eat, so giving everybody a fair chance, because there were some who wore and some who weren't vegetarians.

- Nelson? - Yes. - Hi. - Hello. - Can you hear me? - Yes. - Actually, I have a question regarding animals. I wonder what is your opinion about euthanasia of animals, since I'm talking about animals that we have at home, because Of course, I feel it's the best way that we leave them kind of to die naturally. But for example, we have horses and since we keep them, you know, closed in nature, when they would get weak, there would be predators that would kill them before they suffer too much. But here, actually, they can suffer a lot before they die just because we kind of broke this chain. I don't know. This is my view.

I'm wondering how... How do you see these connections? So the general consensus on this is that you want to prolong life as much as you can, because at the end of the day, there's always a fear of death in all beings. And the last moments can be of confusion, especially for animals. They might not have the wherewithal to know what's going on. And so there's always this energetic sort of attachment, clinging to life. And so when the mind or the life energy of that particular being is ready to be let go, it lets go on its own. But if we disturb that process, that can create something that might be a deterrent in their mind and cause for an uncomfortable mental process during dying, during the death.

So this is why people talk about not disturbing the natural processes of life. Having said that, in the suttas, there are some examples like Vakkali, and forget the other name. I think it's Channa. And both of these are really people who have old bodies, frail bodies, their bodies can't go on anymore. And so they go to the Buddha and they say that now it is time for me to go. And we don't know. There are different interpretations. One interpretation is when they decided to take the knife, and then they were about to die, as I say, take the knife meaning commit suicide, and they were about to die, the mind let go completely and they became arahants.

Were arahants, and that they let go, and, you know, went away. In any case, what was the Buddha's response to both of them? In fact, what was the Buddha's response also to Sariputta when he went to the Buddha and he said, I am now going to relinquish my life using parinibbana? All he said was, do what seems appropriate to you. He didn't say yes or no or anything. In other words, it's always in the volition of the other person. Don't take away their volition, don't take away their choice. It's always reliant on what they choose to do. The reason I bring this up is because it's the same with human beings. They have DNR and they have all these things, and so it's always dependent upon that person and their choice. At the end of the day, with animals it's a bit trickier, because we don't know what they actually want, but we do know that all beings cling to life, and for this reason we try to keep it as natural as possible. And so it is always dependent upon the situation.

Maybe this is what we think it's suffering. It's more we have to pay attention. It's not our suffering because... It could be a projection of our suffering onto them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, thank you. And one more question, if I may, about the path. You said it once so nicely that the Buddha said, easy at the beginning and it's easy at the end. So it's always, we have to pay attention to keep it light, to keep it soft, to have this. So for me, it means we have to take these steps, that each of us needs to keep it light, right? And I wonder how you see the role of a teacher, because I think sometimes the attachments are so strong, we can get caught up.

And if we have a regular contact with a good teacher, maybe this is very valuable for the practice. How do you see this relationship, student-teacher? This is a good question. I don't see that it is important to have a teacher at all after you know the practice. Can guide you here once in a while, but you're the true teacher. Your inner guidance system is the true teacher. It's your ability to have intuition, and it's your ability to see, because based on what you know and what you have learned through the suttas, through dharma talks and so on, that, okay, this is the right path. There's this inner knowing. It's like, oh, this is not the right path, or I shouldn't be going this way, I should be going that way. And this is why it's so important for everyone to know this.

At the end of the day, you have to empower yourselves. You have to be able to say, okay, I know enough to know that this is not good. And I know enough to know that this is the right path. Right? Everybody has the training wheels when they come on retreat the first time, or maybe a few times. And there might be a guide. There might be a teacher to help you and so on. But at the end of the day, the training wheels are off. Now you have to be able to ride on your own. You have to be able to walk the path on your own. You have to trust yourself enough.

You need to have enough self-empowerment to be able to know, okay, what I'm doing is in alignment with the Dhamma. It's kind of letting go again, right? Of doubt. As they say, right? I think the Zen Buddhists say when they see the Buddha on the road, kill him. Why? Another attachment. At the end of the day, even those who became arahants had to let go of their attachment to the Buddha, their attachment to the teacher. There's a respect for the teacher. There is a respect for the role of a teacher and so on, and the gratitude for that. But there's none of this. None of this, like, you know, what we have nowadays is like these self-styled gurus and self-styled

godmen who require your bhakti and devotion and complete sort of, you know, like you should worship me kind of nonsense. None of that was there in the Dhamma. So we have to understand we can go to people in the spirit of friendship, in other words. Let's say you come to me. You come to me as a friend, you don't come to me as a student, right? I'm not a teacher. I'm here because I have nothing else to do. Beautiful. Thank you. I have a question about the Buddha saying easy at the beginning and easy at the end. In one of the talks, you talked about at the end of anagami, that's when the real work begins.

And so I'm thinking, oh, then it gets really hard. So maybe if you could clarify that a little more. Well, I didn't say that. The Buddha said it. He actually said that we have all of these sotapannas, all of these anagamis and everything. And the Buddha was like, oh, that's all easy stuff. Now, to get to the real deal, which is arahatship, you're going to require some true letting go. It's not about that. It's difficult. It's just that there's a lot more to let go that is much deeper, like the subtle conceit and the craving for outcomes. The ignorance is so deeply embedded in the mind.

It will take time to let go of that. I have a question related to objects of meditation. Buddha taught lots of different objects of meditation. In some talks, maybe for Rahula, Sariputta suggested the breathing meditation object, then Buddha changes to the asubha practice. So what is the importance of the object of meditation, depending on that person's situation? So we have something like, I think, 40 different kinds of objects of meditation if you look at the suttas. And it's depending on that person's situation, because of their mind or their mindset. Which means, for example, the Buddha gave Rahula at the time the asubha practices. Why? Because he was attached to his body. He was a handsome young man and he really knew that.

And he was like, yeah, I am, I am this and I am that. He had all this conceit, and that could have resulted in more lust for more beautiful bodies and things like that. And so that's why the Buddha prescribed to him asubha practices as a deterrent, as a preventative from that happening. For somebody who has a more agitated, irritated sort of mindset, what is their loving kindness? And then the brahmaviharas and so on. The breath is used for somebody who is more speculative. They're too analytical. They're thinking about this, that, and the other. So I think the object of meditation, you can choose whatever object of meditation that you want. No big deal.

People even do mantras, for example, which is not even in Buddhism. But they do it. And the key is not to make the object such a big deal. The key is not to make the object the thing that, you know, the mind focuses on and becomes one with. We're not here to become one with loving kindness. We're not here to become one with the breath, if you're doing breath practice. We're not here to become one with compassion and so on. Use the object as an anchor. It's an anchor to keep the mind collected enough so that it teaches itself what are the hindrances that are present. We want the hindrances to come up, but not that we're shaking them to come up.

We are anchoring ourselves so that we don't spin away in the hurricane. We continue to stay in the eye of the hurricane, which is that collectedness. For that use, for that purpose. Of course, as I just said earlier, depending upon the mindset, it also helps to balance out certain mentalities, certain kinds of mindsets, certain kinds of deficiencies that are there in the mind, in terms of too much lust for the body or too much speculation and so on. When someone is about to die and, for example, in the medical context, they apply morphine to alleviate the pain and so on, is there any conflict within the Buddhist cosmology? I don't see any conflict, personally.

That anything you can do to alleviate the physical pain is so important, because it allows the person to let go. There is another idea that if we give it, the mind is dulled and so on. Well, that's one perspective, but I truly believe in the last moments that if a person has enough collectedness, enough practice, and enough encouragement from their loved ones to look at the good things in their life, that will penetrate through any kind of dullness of morphine or anything else that helps to alleviate the pain. So I am of the mindset that it's not a big deal. Okay, thank you. There's no other questions. I'm going to move on, and I'm going to give post to John so he can just give you some other information.

There you go, John. Thank you, Dustin. First of all, I just want to express my deep, deep respect and appreciation for each of you. It's the first time I've been able to sit in on interviews from people in this teaching. I've just been so deeply moved by your sincerity of practice and your experience. I want to thank each of you so much for sharing, and for being here, and for what you're doing. With that in mind, I just wanted to talk about what we're doing. First of all, this was the second of the Freedom of Mind fundraising retreats. Thanks so much for participating. Freedom of Mind was created by inspired practitioners of meditation who have worked with Delson to share this with people who don't have access, because once they have access, they'll have the tools and they can be self-empowered to do the practice.

We're just getting started. We're getting a lot of things going, building up programming and so on. I just want to show what we're up to and how you might support it. The whole idea is to focus on what's essential and not to focus on what's not essential, for bringing profound peace to everyone, making it accessible to everyone. We need a lot of help right now to get started. So we're just getting our fundraising thing together. We're doing a major fundraising campaign in November. I'm going to be putting these links in the chat and also sharing them by email afterwards. This is our Freedom of Mind website.

Callan and Andrew, who are the founders, have put so much work into this. We're really excited about all the things that we're going to be launching in the next few months, including some fireside chats and also more retreats and events and much more. The other thing is, as for Delson himself, I'm thinking of this as sort of a Dana for adults in the modern world. For a non-monastic person to have a viable support, reliable financial viability is essential. We're using Patreon as a platform for that. Patreon is a platform where, at various different tiers, you can support in different ways, and you get different levels of access and different benefits, including videos, vlogs, some Zooms, and one-on-ones, a whole bunch of different benefits.

If you come to the Patreon page, Delson's Patreon page, you can see that. You can see the various aspects. Then there are these different levels that have different options for what's available there. Also, just for a direct line to Delson, you can book consultations with Delson through his website. That's here, and that link will also be there. I'm going to put those links in the chat and put them in an email afterwards. I think that's all I have to say. Great. Thank you, John, that. I just want to thank David and Kirsten for helping us be able to use Dhammasuka's platform so that we can conduct this retreat and so on.

Because at the time, Freedom of Mind wasn't yet ready and their website and everything else. So they've been very generous that way. And I want to give thanks to John as well for assisting in all the things that he's been doing for this retreat and also elsewhere. And, of course, all of you took out the time to actually participate. And I'm very happy with meeting each and every one of you and seeing your progress, seeing the ways in which you have really followed the instructions. None of you here was rebellious enough to not follow my instructions. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but in any case, there we go. I'm very grateful for your time and for your participation. So let's end this with sharing some merit. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Nelson. Thank you, Nelson. Thank you, Nelson. Thank you, Nelson. Thank you, John.