How to Stop Suffering according to Buddha
Hello. Good morning, everyone. Back with another episode. Don't know how many of you are still listening to this podcast, but, summer's come in. It means our focus goes a bit away from, you know, being strict.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna use strict, being consistent with our training and nutrition. There's a lot more stuff to enjoy in the world. And therefore, things fall to the side, which is fine because the majority drops. And then, obviously, we we we typically pick stuff back up in September. Right?
Speaker 1:That's kind of the the flow we do. So, obviously, as a company, we are very aware of the human mind and how it works and, like, motivation comes and goes times of the year. So what do you want from us first as our members to do over summer? Do you want a three week challenge where we do a step challenge because it's nice to get walking in the evenings because the sun doesn't go down for a while? Maybe daily workout is twenty minutes fun, blast, fun, have a laugh, work at me, Ryan.
Speaker 1:Like, you know, what you want mid midway through the summer to making sure that it doesn't become one just downward spiral, and you actually have this uplift for three weeks. And it's just basic stuff, like twenty, thirty minutes a day. That's it. Just to get you back feeling good. So let me know what you think about that, and I'll get moving on it.
Speaker 1:But I was thinking yesterday, like, god, it's so e do you know how much easier the days are when things are going your way? The life is easy when things are going your way. When things aren't going your way, right, you put these plans together, or you've got targets to hit or the company did well before and is not doing as well now, And that starts taking over your mind. Right? And I just it's unbelievable difference.
Speaker 1:So for any of you here where things are going your way and you feel on top of the world, you know, please make the most of those days because they are unbelievable days. And the days where we you go, you know what? You need to do something. Yeah. Change needs to happen.
Speaker 1:You need to dig deep. No one's watching the work you do late at night. No one's watching the work you do day to day. You know? No one's watching me work in the day going, well done, Scott.
Speaker 1:Good day of work. You know, I don't need it. But what we do in the shadows is often the most important work we do. A lot of us go through the shadows many times, and it's a normal part of the process. And often the shadows and you work through tough times, you actually come up with the best ideas the best moves, and, that's all about persevering.
Speaker 1:Right? That's what it's all about. So shout out to anyone here. Just have a go through the same time. You know?
Speaker 1:It's so this is what it's all about, really. That's it. That's the difference between people who make a difference and people who don't. Some people only do stuff when the things are going their way, and things that go in their way is oftentimes external to them. And when things aren't going their way, victim.
Speaker 1:Victim mentality comes in, and that's that's the death of you. So you can't be victim. Anyway, let's get back to Buddhism. You with me? Buddhism today.
Speaker 1:So here we're gonna talk about mindfulness of breathing, The real Buddhist way by this. So it says, breathing, so breathing, it is an exercise in mindfulness and not a breathing exercise like the pranayama of Hindustan yoga. In the case of the Buddhist practice, there is no retention of breath or any other interference with it. There is just a quiet, bare observation of its natural flow with a firm and steady but easy and buoyant attention. But not your breath you notice your breath, but they're not deliberately regulated.
Speaker 1:And the reason the Buddhists do this because they say, breath is always with us, therefore we can and we should turn our attention to it any at any free or empty minutes during our daily occupations, even though we may not be able to do so with the highest attention demanded by the exercise proper. To put in a few conscious deep and calm respirations before start in any continuous work will likely be found most beneficial to oneself and to the work as well. To cultivate the habit of doing so before taking important decisions, making responsible utterances, talking to an excited person, etc, will prevent many rash acts and words and will preserve the balance and efficiency of the mind. By simply observing our breath, we can easily and unnoticed by others withdraw into ourselves if we wish to shut ourselves off from disturbing impressions, empty talk in a large company, or from any other annoyance. Alright.
Speaker 1:So it's a it's a real real powerful tool. So because in respiration, used as an object of bare attention, the heaving of the ocean of impermanence is continuous rise and fall can be well observed. Right? So this breath is always there, always an option for you guys to turn into, which is interesting. Right?
Speaker 1:Because you think about it's true. And they used to think that breath is life. Right? So, you know, when someone stops breathing, they die. And, you know, that's the observation they made and, you know, this breath, we breathe in oxygen is keeping it loads of stuff are keeping us alive, but that is a big factor.
Speaker 1:Right? This breath part. And then he talks about the posture as well, the awareness of body posture and making sure that, you know, you are becoming aware of that throughout the day and not kind of slouching and stuff and actually bringing yourself back up to observe in your body, posture and see what's going on there. And, you know, the Buddhism to be fair, the Buddhism stuff is I wouldn't say it's extreme, but it's a lot of systems in place here. There's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:This book's deep, a lot of systems, a lot of words. And I don't think for the everyday person, it's gonna be very helpful on on the whole. But there are some things we can all take to our day to day life, like the breath, like I mentioned yesterday, the bare attention to things. Letting wisdom catch up with you, you can look at the object with this just objectively with the facts and then make the decision based of unclear comprehension of purpose, they call it. So you need to figure out your purpose, and that is what you bring to the decision making pro progress every single time, looking at things as bare facts.
Speaker 1:You know? That Snickers bar isn't gonna make me happy. It's a bar of chocolate that's densely in calories, full stop. I can eat there, but it's not gonna make me happy. I think it's gonna make me happy, but it's not gonna make me happy.
Speaker 1:So bear attention, reveal the truth of it. It's just that it's a nice thing that releases dopamine doesn't actually supply happiness, which is we confuse it with. And in that, seeing, observing, and going, you know what? I'm close to my macros today. It's not worth it for me.
Speaker 1:My purpose is bigger than that. You might be able to walk away unscathed by these moments. And again, we're not making good and bad foods out of these discussions. We're just seeing things as they are. And it says in the book, these contemplations will also point to the self deception in regarding and cherishing as mine this body which tomorrow may belong to the elements or as prey to the birds and worms.
Speaker 1:These contemplations will also make one more familiar with the fact of death. Detachment gives with regards to its objects mastery as well as freedom. And even if the body succumbs to sickness and pain, the serenity of the mind will not be affected. It goes on you about feelings. It's about all this stuff.
Speaker 1:Two thousand five hundred years ago, things we still things we still don't know how to deal with today. Think about it. We have not we have not evolved psychologically. We have evolved technologically, no doubt. Of course, we have.
Speaker 1:Psychologically, we've gone backwards. We don't even know. We our feelings have gone from a multitude of feelings of different languages to be way more complex. Language before before Sanskrit, which is the oldest language that most Indo European languages come from was more complicated than Sanskrit. And Sanskrit is very complicated.
Speaker 1:So back in a day when we weren't fighting each other and trying to accumulate wealth and slaves and land, the purpose it seems of humanity at that time was to develop sophistication of language, of discussion, talking, getting this across and they built up an insane language. This is in the book languages, it talks about us. They built up an insane language so intricate about the thoughts, thinking about how the how we think inside of our brains and we use the the physical word to explain it. And over time, language becomes simpler and simpler and simpler. So Sanskrit and a Latin and then into the romantic languages, French and Italian, and then we add the Germanic languages coming into the English and you add, you know, then you have, I to know where Brythonic and Welsh come into that, but all from the same source.
Speaker 1:Right? Become simpler and simpler and simpler. Even though German and French are more complicated than English today, German and French are still simple compared to the Latin and Sanskrit much simpler. So, and in that, we are not as sharp in understanding or explaining what happens in our mind. So we become more blunt with our thoughts, more blunt with our explanations and in its bluntness, we, I feel that we don't have much of a touch on what's going on.
Speaker 1:So feelings as our feelings wheel, you know, we got some feelings, some of us haven't even heard some of the words. So it's important to have an emotional vocabulary think Dean's Tobogle is actually quite an important thing. Like, am I depressed? Or am I slightly annoyed or sad? Or there's other words like, am I actually that depressed?
Speaker 1:Am I that word, you know? So it says here that the Pali term Vedana, rendered here by feeling signifies in Buddhist psychology just pleasant, unpleasant or indifferent sensation of physical and mental origin. Exactly same stoics. How did they just nuts. Right?
Speaker 1:Buddha, Socrates. Right? They were born and Confucius were born around the same time. Whilst Buddha might have been known known about Confucius, the Buddha didn't know about Socrates, Socrates didn't know about the Buddha, and they were alive at the same time. What is nuts is that they became they came to the same things at the same time without being discussion.
Speaker 1:How nuts is that? So Socrates would talk about pleasant, unpleasant, indifferent. Socrates was the father of stoicism in a sense because this the main stoic Xeno, the founder, got a lot of his he started soc he started stoicism because of the wisdom of Socrates. And they were speaking about this fact that you've got pleasant, you've got unpleasant, you've got the stoics say you've got good, you've got bad, and you've got indifferent. You got these three categories.
Speaker 1:And it's not used as in the English language in the sense of emotion, which is a mental factor of much more complex nature. So the term of feelings and emotions here. Feeling in the sense of spoken of is the first reaction to any sense impression. Okay. So feeling in the sense of spoken of is the first reaction to any sense impression.
Speaker 1:You see something, you've touched something, you smell something, and therefore deserves the particular attention of those who aspire to mastery over the mind. In the formula of dependent origination by which the Buddha shows the conditioned arising of this whole mass of suffering, sense impression is said to be the principal condition of feeling. So you feel from your senses. That makes complete sense, right? I see a cake, I feel joy.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm drew and you know? While feeling this part is the potential condition of craving and subsequently even more intense clinging. So what I say in here is like you're breaking the reel down. This is genius because it's true. So we have a feeling which then can turn into a craving.
Speaker 1:So if I feel sad, I crave not to be sad, I feel joy, I crave more of it, I feel hungry, I feel I need to eat that and I crave it. And then the craving involves clinging, if you think about it. So I'm craving something, I wanna cling onto it. And Krishnamurti talks about this, pleasure often turns into pain. We go on holiday and on the flight home, we wish the holiday lasted longer.
Speaker 1:And in that pleasure we once had on the holiday, we now are clinging onto it, we are craving it more causing pain and suffering. Right? This is what the Buddha says is the crucial point in the conditioned origin of suffering. Yes, you're bang on, mate. Of course you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I agree. Sense impression is said to be the principal condition of feeling while feeling as part of the potential condition of craving and an intense clinging and then clinging into suffering. Do we see that chain reaction happening? Because it is at the point of feeling may give rise to passionate emotion of various types and is therefore here that one may be able to break the fatuous concatenation, if I if in receiving a sense impression one is able to pause and stop at the phase of feeling and make it in its very first stage of manifestation of the object of bad attention, feeling will not be able to originate craving or other passions.
Speaker 1:It will stop at the bare statements of pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, giving clear comprehension time to enter and decide about the attitude of action to be taken. Furthermore, if one notices and bear attention, the condition the rising of feeling is gradual fading away and giving room to another feeling, one will find from one's own experience that there is no necessity at all for being carried away by passionate reaction, which will start a new path of suffering. That's powerful, guys. You see enough of me. I hope you are.
Speaker 1:But it's still the voice of the mindfulness speaks. It is pleasant feeling like many others too and nothing else. It is an unpleasant feeling like many others too and nothing else. Such an attitude will contribute much to an inner balance and contentedness which are needed so greatly amongst the viciousness of life. So right mindfulness provides the remedy by extending detached observation also to feelings of others and comparing them with one's own in accordance with the instructions of practice given in the discourse.
Speaker 1:I'll stop it at that today, but that's powerful stuff. If you're not if that's not hitting if that's not ringing a bell in your head, going this is bang on. This this shit is bang on. If the Stoics didn't ring a bell in your head with that with the stuff, and this isn't, I don't know what to say. They figured it out two thousand five hundred years ago.
Speaker 1:Good old Socrates, good old Buddha. They figured it out, and they tried to help us. But what we did, we turned them into institution, organized religions, and all this nonsense. And today we've got modern philosophy, which is what do they mean by the word red? Me shut up.
Speaker 1:Right? It means red. Like they're not there's no quiz. There's no riddle going on here. So let's look back at the source of this.
Speaker 1:It's interesting why is it at this time did these breakthroughs come? So we know that about eight thousand years ago, I believe it's eight thousand years ago, that humans started moving away from this kind of society of peace into taking over other tribes and taking slaves, and then accumulating towns and cities and stuff. So the focus went on building big for language and, you know, that type of stuff to accumulation. And accumulation, security, war, slaves, and it took thousands of years to figure out, like, what is going on with the human mind? It's gone to a complete mess.
Speaker 1:Then then, you know, the Buddha went through his thing, Socrates his thing. And where are we today? Two thousand five hundred years later, where are we today? We can't even understand like he's saying there that it's feel the feeling of the feeling is the starting point of all the next step, the chain reaction. If you can't spot the feeling and have bad attention or what Krishnamurti calls choiceless awareness, like the similar things, can you look at something without choosing anything about it?
Speaker 1:Choosing if it's good or bad, any thoughts? Can you just look at something? Maybe the word bear are not bears in the grizzly bear, but bear in nothing. Bear attention, maybe it's a better word. So can I look at things with bear attention?
Speaker 1:Can I look at a feeling with bear attention? And if needed be so, it's a it's it's nice, it's it's pleasant, it's not pleasant, was indifferent and leave it at that because that feeling is not going to run away to create an emotion, to create a crave and to create clinging and to create suffering. That is the chain. Well, well, well, I don't know what you think about it. Can't hear you.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it's one way communication here right now, but it feels good. It feels good being reminded of stuff. I studied Buddhism when I was in school, I loved it. But we didn't really get into this stuff. We got into the more the religious side of it.
Speaker 1:I'm like this is the side, this is it. But he does talk about the middle path. You've heard about Buddhism, there's something to the phrase the middle path, which is the moderation of the Buddha. And again, it's a big part of Turtle, it's moderation approach and Socrates as well. Big crossovers between both boys.
Speaker 1:Big crossovers. But take that with you today. Can you have better attention to your feelings today? Did you get a feeling from seeing, smelling, someone touch someone touch you, maybe some pain in the body? What are the ways of that?
Speaker 1:Smell, see, hear, touch, you know, those things that cause a feeling. Can you have better attention to feelings? Can you be on guard and see if you can see what happens? And then maybe you can catch it all feelings without them turning into tornadoes. But that's it for today.
Speaker 1:That's it for Buddhism number two today. I may carry on for a few more days of this, and then discuss a few studies on weight loss. There's a new few studies on long term fat loss I wanna talk about, which is a very, very interesting. So, guys, have a good day. Remember, get your one big thing done.
Speaker 1:What is it? What's gonna move the needle today? Same for me. What's gonna move the needle today, Scott? Do it in the morning.
Speaker 1:Move the needle. Get it done. You know? What's this prompt? Me prompting you now to do some action.
Speaker 1:Is it a track? Whatever it is, don't fight yourself. Just go and do it. Once you've done it, don't fall back to TikTok. Keep going.
Speaker 1:Don't let the day pull you back. Phones, guys. I'm telling you, I'm trying I'm trying to work my way through this phone business. The phones, we need to do something about them. But other than that, have a good day.
Speaker 1:Speak to you all tomorrow.
