So hello and welcome back to another Dave's Story.
So this story is about a marauding samurai warrior terrorising the folk in the towns and villages of northern Japan,
Wandering from village to village,
Town to town,
Stealing and pillaging,
Just getting up to no good.
And on his wanderings,
He happens upon a Zen monastery.
Oh,
He thinks to himself,
What could I find here?
So he wanders around the grounds and he sees this very small door.
Opens the door,
The handle creaks and he steps in to a very big,
Beautiful Buddhist shrine hall.
And at the altar on the shrine,
He sees something moving and he gets a little closer and he notices it's an old man.
The old man is polishing the Buddha's feet and all the ornaments on the shrine.
And this samurai warrior is full of anger,
Full of hatred and he shouts to the old master who's polishing the Buddha's feet.
Hey,
You stupid old man.
No response.
Hey,
I'm a samurai warrior.
Do not ignore me.
No response.
So the samurai warrior walks up behind the old man.
So I'm going to chop off your head.
And at that moment,
The old monk turns around and the warrior says,
But I've decided I'm going to give you a chance.
So if you can answer this question correctly,
I'll let you go.
I won't chop off your head.
So I want you to tell me,
What is the difference between heaven and hell?
And the old monk speaks up.
Oh,
You stupid little man,
That's easy.
And nobody had ever spoken to the warrior like that.
So his face is red with anger.
He lifts his sword ready to cut off the old monk's head.
And the old monk looks at him in the eye.
He says,
That my young friend is hell.
And the warrior just pauses.
He realizes what the old monk had done.
Drops his sword.
And falls to his knees.
Put his hands together and bows to the old man.
And the old monk says,
And that,
My dear young man,
Is heaven.
And that's the end of the story.
Now,
For me,
That's such a beautiful illustration of how the warrior wasn't told the difference between heaven and hell.
The old monk,
The Zen master,
Actually showed him.
He illustrated it with his own life.
So what he's saying is,
When we're lost in thought,
When we're lost in greed,
Hatred,
Anger,
That is hell.
In Buddhism,
We have what's called a hell realm.
And a hell realm is not a place we go to when we die or it's not external to us.
It's a state of mind.
And so is heaven.
It's a state of mind.
Heaven is,
As you probably guessed by now,
It's peacefulness,
It's kindness,
It's compassion,
It's thoughtfulness,
It's joyful,
It's fun.
It's not all seriously sort of pious,
Doing good.
It's someone who knows how to enjoy life and enjoy other people.
So really,
Our practice,
Our life practice is to move from living in the hell realm to living in the heaven realm.
Moving from agitation and anger to peace and contentment.
That's the path.
Now what happens when we're in the hell realm?
And we all know the hell realm.
We've all inhabited the hell realm at points in our life.
Even points during the day.
Maybe just in a traffic queue or a traffic jam.
Not getting what we want.
Just the weather being not the way we want it.
And off we go.
We can go deep and deep into this hell realm.
And we believe that that is the way the world is.
That is the way other people are.
They're out to get me.
They're thwarting my desires.
And really,
And this was the Buddha's point,
It's when we believe those thoughts,
When we're locked into that mindset,
When we believe that getting what we want,
Getting what I want,
Will satisfy me.
And it won't.
It doesn't.
It may do for a few moments.
But this warrior had been marauding,
Stealing,
Pillaging for months and months.
And he was still doing it.
If he satisfied him,
After the first time,
He would have stopped.
But that's the nature of that kind of wanting.
See,
The hell realm is a kind of wanting.
It's this constant wanting of something.
And see,
Part of being in the hell realm is that we don't quite know what we want.
Part of being in the hell realm is delusion.
We are deluded.
So if I get rid of this person,
If I chop off these heads or whatever,
I'll be happy.
That will satisfy me.
And we all know it doesn't.
Getting what we want doesn't satisfy us.
We need to come out of,
We need to find a way out of the hell realm.
And it's not difficult.
It's the end of living in the mind,
In thought,
In views and opinions and judgments,
And believing what the mind is telling us.
Believing that what goes on in the head,
You could say the heart of the mind,
As well,
Is reality.
It's painting a picture.
Just do this and you'll be happy.
So it's moving out of that mind mode of living into,
We could say,
Into presence,
Into your true nature,
Into the realm where the old monk was living.
The Zen master was living in the heavenly realm and he was prepared to give up his own life to show the warrior freedom.
Wonderful.
So let's just have a few moments of quiet.
Nobody listening to this is going to the extremes of the warrior,
But we all do it in less dramatic ways.
So let's just see how we go into thought and we wind ourself up,
Think about other people,
About the future,
Worrying about the future or hankering after the past.
Let's just have a few minutes of seeing this and I want us to come back to presence.
So just sitting quietly.
There have been moments of silence,
So you can do this.
That's it.
Resting the attention down in the body.
Resting the attention in the lower belly,
The seat area.
Now rest there.
Feel the breath if you wish.
Now at some point you will notice that you've drifted into thought.
Maybe wanting something,
Regretting something,
Obsessing over something.
At the moment you realize that,
I just want you to bring the attention back out of there and put it in what we call the heavenly realm,
The realm of presence.
There's no wanting in presence.
Sense into presence,
Feel into it.
If it's easier,
Feel into the body,
That felt sense of the body.
Try to keep it simple.
The moment you realize that you're in thought,
It's okay.
Without any drama,
Just shift the attention back.
Tuning into presence once again.
Okay,
I'm just gonna say a few words to bring this to an end.
See,
Meditation,
The way I share it,
Is so very simple.
It's seeing once and for all what causes my suffering,
Your suffering,
And bringing it to an end.
And we only suffer mentally and psychologically,
I'm not talking about pain,
When we move into the world of self-centered thinking or ego-centered thinking.
What that does is,
It works in two ways.
It wants and doesn't want.
So there's craving for something and an aversion of something.
That's the way it works.
It's dualistic.
And the more that we rest in presence,
The more familiar it becomes and the easier it becomes.
So,
I hope you've enjoyed this story and the short meditation.
And I hope to see you tomorrow,
So to speak.
Bye-bye.
