so for example another another way to do a guided contemplation well in a way that matters to us developing wisdom at least would be to to ponder on various mental states they usually are something that people don't want to think about so something disagreeable that's why their the contemplation of death in the Buddhist practice is wonderful well the quickest the sharpest obviously it's risky ways of developing wisdom and abandoning experiencing this passion towards existence so you know there are other ways as well that you could other themes that you can dwell on and that can
help you they were the same dispassion but it's not enough to think about it once or twice just have a thought or something I mean on some occasion I suppose yeah like if the conditions are right so to speak you're in the right frame of mind one thought is enough to establish the theme they will have a deeper emotional significance on you but then this one is early last and if you're only in establishing your practice or contemplation upon that feeling of quick inspiration then you won't be really doing the work so you want to
be able to to think and ponder on things even if you don't necessarily feel like doing so so in this in this particular instance the the theme you could be developing for example is the sense of safety like just whatever whatever situation you living in the sense of safety which is obviously inseparable from your existential sense itself so you want to well start looking into it to begin with so ask yourself safety safety what is Safety mean for me do I feel safe now if the answer is yes which problem was recalled as a yes
then ask yourself a further question is that sense of safety something I can always have a say in I can always be in charge or or is it sort of I can only kind of my efforts can only approximate that result of safety as in our hope for the best so again as I mentioned many times in other you know it talks you don't wanna be like just asking questions wrong answer you ask the question on safety in this case they will then make you think about how you feel now what does that say to
mean for you so what is the safety mean freedom you can let that question and do it and think about it there's no right or wrong answer it's really just clarified what's already there sin society that you're talking about but what does that mean what what constitutes safety in your experience it is an absence of physical discomfort of physical threat emotional absence of emotional discomfort both yeah that's probably it but then ask yourself so what is then in common what is the common thread through to physical discomfort emotional discomfort mental discomfort what is absence of
it means safety so what is the common absence in these phenomena they determine your sense of current safety so its absence of unpleasant feeling on that fundamental existential level make you know you can be experiencing some annoyance but fundamentally that doesn't compromise your sense of safety but now you want to be dwelling on the sense of safety why is it not compromised is it because you have a say in it why do you feel safe I mean your heart can stop any like next second and that's it your safety is gone so then your input
in your own safety is very relative but that's what what an ignorant mind the mind it's not devoted to training that's what it forgets everybody knows that you are fundamentally not in control but everybody chooses to not dwell on it because it's too unpleasant it brings anxiety dread discomfort all sorts of things and that's the ignorant that's a video choosing to not think about certain things that pertain to the nature resistance so if you don't start choosing against that grain of avoiding thinking about things that cause me anxiety that's how you start and you stop
ignoring it right with the absence of ignorance the attitude of in you will you will become more and more familiar with the nature of those phenomena which means you will be less and less passionate about life life as you know it because life as you know it depends upon ignorance of certain things that's why the mind is devoted to ignorance is the mind that finds join sensuality defines justification in anger that finds there finds peace in distraction but if you approve the ignorance none of these three three things can be manifested in or can continue
their uninterrupted manifestation in your life it means you still be alive but now the life will have a different value for you so sense of safety again it's it's it's something quite fundamental very important to all of us but something that pretty much everyone takes for granted until it's too late usually so you don't want to wait for that you want to start questioning it and challenging it while you still can while it's still while you still can help make a choice about it so sense of safety means absence of displeasure threatening things they threaten
my life but all order the life I'm used to it see like for a person who is fully devoted and engage in sensuality not having access to essential objects is already filled feels like a threat exists natural threat somebody who will be drawn from sensuality doesn't devote his time just to just with sensual thoughts and actions he won't feel threatened if he has no access to that which he is indifferent towards but then he might feel threatened toward something that he does depend on that's like in the suitors we discussed it before as well when
then when the monkey dwells in the forest he develops his mind upon the perceptions of the forest then when he goes to the village nothing in the village well nothing that he sees smells tastes artists editor in the village can disturb his mind which is established upon the perceptions of the forest but in the Buddha says if something were to happen to the forest his mind would disturbed so then he sees that and then he goes a step higher what is that forest then what is higher than the forest it's perception of Earth or you
can even say perception of life or perception of the living body mindfulness of the body you establish your mind upon that then doesn't matter the circumstance doesn't matter the change of the circumstances whether it's adverse or positive or whatever you would remain unaffected because your mind has not been cultivating dependence upon those things so that's why you want to start questioning the sense of safety because for most people starting point is that that sense of safety is proliferated too far out as in it's not just your health in your life that you depend on it's
your health your life your work your family your friends people you want to do what you tell them to do access to full access to distraction access to central object that's where people's minds are that that how far out so any of those things anything less than those things they would be experiencing a degree of threat like threat to the lifestyle that I know or which is more correctly to say threat to the life study that I take for granted and assume but you want to reflect that those things will inevitably they have to be
taken away from you so you better start dwelling and that before it's too late rather than waiting for them to be taken away from you and then you think somehow because if you haven't been dealing with those things while they were in front of you what makes you think you'll be able to deal with them when they are removed against your will it's too late it's like being able to do with whole I don't know 300 kilos in your back suddenly never ever made the effort to put weight on your back and endure it just
hope that when it comes you be able to hold it well that's quite a quite a quite a foolish attitude so your meditation your contemplation can be reflecting upon how far is your sense of safety proliferated how much did you take for granted basically of your life of your sense experience of people around you it quiet and then and then start to start training it in bringing your mind back to things that that are not so much out of your control so you can ask where is my sense of say what makes me feel safe
right here right now if if I were to get sick we're experiencing xiety yes that means then that there is a degree of threat in sickness which means my safety is is overreaching my sense of safety because you can only do so much to control to have input in your health but fundamentally it's not on you yet doesn't mean you neglect your health but don't use the amount of input you have in your health don't use that to develop a notion that you are in charge of your health so don't ignore the fact that you
can never ever step outside of it and become the full complete master and if you have any doubt about that just ask just imagine getting sick would you be affected and if the answer is yes emotionally mentally I will be affected I would you know be afraid or whatever depending on what sickness it is means I am threatened by it and if there is if there is an experience of threat can only affect you because your assumption is it's taking up things that are not in your control that's it so if you stop taking things
that don't belong to you including your own health your body your whole life and everything else that comes out of it nothing can threaten you there is no basis for that threat to land you could see nothing has changed in things you still have your life you're still alive our hunt is still alive so nothing has changed yet everything has changed because your attitude has changed so you don't need to rewrite the significance of things like liability to illness stays for puja name for another hunt it's just because Papagena is taking his life for granted
he said he's functioning senses as fully mine then he will be affected when illness comes but Aaron has removed his attitude not the senses or day liability and everything else he has just removed his assumption of ownership and that's why he is he has no fear he cannot be threatened by anything and also in a practical level you can if you dwell for example on the nature of your body natural life mindfulness of death means you are then establishing your mind upon something that's that's better then then depending or trying to control the circumstances for
example okay I don't care what happens over there but I care what happens in my house I care what happens to my house I care to who moves and becomes my neighbor or all these things but if all you care even when you are in your house is about mindfulness of the body mindfulness of liability to to death or sickness and so on even even if things happen to your house to your own bedroom to your own like environment the closest term um you won't be affected by it and then you won't be affected even
if your body starts to break apart while you're still alive because your mind has already withdrawn from dependence on this but senses they were secondary to the body and that's something again it's so something you would get instantaneous but like one thought that said everything is clear it basically is something you have to keep doing because it's not about again all these truths are in a way obvious and that's not the problem the problem is that your actions your choices your intentions are choosing to ignore them that's it that's why I keep repeating Abijah it's
not a metaphysical ignorance or or a mystery or a secret behind the veil of maya or something that you need to discern no it's your everyday attitude in regard to your everyday experience when you choose to ignore things that undermine your your gratuitous desire your gratuitous your will or your gratuitous need for distraction that's it you stop ignoring these things you will you will you will automatically then be removing layers and layers and layers of your last aversion and delusion that's it and you can see ignoring it's not on the level of just being mindful
every second of your life no to the level of your intentions your intentions determined whether there is lust whether you're acting out of lust or out of non last absence of lust so when I say you practice mindfulness of these things I don't mean you keep repeating to yourself and present the present I'm sitting and talking about you know you maintain the knowledge of an enduring state of mind that determines your intention that's how you don't ignore you don't ignore where your intentions are rooted because we're not ignoring where your intentions are rooted you will
you won't be able to act carelessly out of them because action is result of your intention so if you're mindful of where your intention is rooted you're by default mindful where your action would be rooted if you were to perform it so then you abstain from it if it's unwholesome and that's it you stick to that fundamental principle and you would prevent your mind from gratuitous maintenance of lust diversion and distraction that's it so that's why that a Vidya is is something you do not something you don't know you need to figure out it's it's
well okay you can not know what you're supposed to do sure that also comes under the Vita but it's really more of an attitude you maintain your the Vita through the attitude of ignoring the nature of things like through acting out of sense of self for example you maintain the ignorant that your experience cannot belong to you you maintain the ignorant of Renata and you can see it's mutually exclusive by not acting out of sense itself well you're closer to understanding the nature of an author so you can't have it both ways you can't be
like oh I am NOT acting out of sense of self but I still have a sense of self that is mine that belongs to me so it's either or you either with the grain of ignorance or against the grain of ignorance if you stopping and the so it's noddings incidental that it's certainly the beginning all the attitudes they go against the ignorance are pretty much the attitude they will cause you lots of anxiety lots of dread lots of fear lots of doubt hindrances because that is the Mara's defense he doesn't want you to stop ignoring
that's how he keeps you bind but to the to the experience that you don't really own and that's where for most people the spiritual practice just becomes the extension of their sensuality you know if your spiritual practice is not undoing your dark your anxiety not through avoiding but through being unaffected by it so in the face of anxiety you're not afraid that's why you know okay well this is certainly closer to the truth then if I refuse to admit that I'm still liable to anxiety for example and then my my practice is just finding sort
of colourful distractions in a spiritual nature these cards they're spiritual things meditation experiences devotional whatever else practices quite often are fully rooted Indian just having something more meaningful to do but you're equally depending on having something to do which is what keeps you floating in an attitude of ignoring that prevents you from facing the truth of anxiety so why are doing so that remains so by undoing you're by not maintaining your attitude ignoring you will be certain initially experiencing more anxiety less confidence more doubt because you're undoing no doubt confidence absence of anxiety that was
based upon ignoring and that initial on doing will be unpleasant but then once you go through with it and you would go through with it if your behavior has been developed as any fewer virtues not giving in to the gross acts of last aversion or distraction that's already a form of strength a form of container that can then enable you to contain the varying xiety or dread or doubt or whatever hindrance has been sort of stirred up on account of you facing the reality of things and when I say reality I mean the nature of
them so in a way you want to start undermining testing your sense of safety that you have now because if it were truly true safety of being unable to suffer on account of anxiety suffer on account of doubt or suffer on account of hindrances then it will stand the test but if it's not that kind of safety like safety of wisdom safety of liberation you will be experiencing a degree of anxiety or fear and that's the practice then you need lines the work for you perfectly so say like practically now say you start questioning sent
to safety and yeah there's a bit of insight you realize yeah you can you can you can get sick somebody could come burn your house take your way kill you whatever those are possibilities and you choose to dwell in them not because of some sort of morbid fascination you just develop them because they counter your indolence and your complacency there is the automatic response if you don't question those thing if you don't think about those things you only do it for the practical purpose of this passion because you can't be emotionally invested in something that's
you know 50/50 you might be taken away okay well I better be careful how much I commit to it because you might disappear the next moment but if you just ignore that fact you start to assume no it's gonna be tomorrow of course justjust think positive just think it's gonna be there forever for as long as I need it then yeah of course that's the attitude you're gonna develop and then you'll be acting accordingly as if yeah you're your own master you're gonna live forever last forever things will stay forever as long as you want
them and even people say no of course we all know we're gonna die no they still assume the sense of self we'll live forever that's very often the case so you want to be reflecting on these opposing themes just to question that sense of nature it is safety there was based entirely on ignoring the possibility of these things because yeah it's fifty-fifty with everything where you gonna be alive or not tomorrow it's 50/50 but you choose are now probably alive what why did you choose that thought because you might not be a lot death might
be hanging no it is actually and you know over all of us so it's certain you just don't know exactly when so why do you then keep investing your attention and choosing based upon as if you're gonna you you will see the old age why is that there's absolutely no justification for that so then you wanna just practice mindfulness of that not to the point of all I want to die but to the point of okay I'll practice enough so I just stopped luxuriously assuming that I will live for 50 years because it's 50/50 that's
it you don't need to push it further you don't need to prove yourself that you will die either you just need to stay with that very pleasant and kind of ambiguous 50/50 that's it because if you stay with it that will become your theme which means you won't be able to act as if you're gonna live forever which means already a great deal of passion anger irritation righteous indignation need for distraction it will be uprooted because you remove the basis for it basis for its growth so that's how that's how these these contemplations are done
rightly now like develop like up like a full-on mental obsession of like that die or die or die no that becoming equally mechanical equally ignorant you're just trying to replace one thing with the other you practice it only to the extent of putting a question what you've been taking for granted not overdoing it and that's why it's the middle way you need to discern that initially ambiguous ground of it might be it might not be either way he won't be for me as some of the said to say but not like it will not be
for me I guarantee no he might be might not either way it's not for me as in I cannot own it so I might live tomorrow I may not live tomorrow either way it's not mine because if it were mine I will know for sure that I will live tomorrow but you don't so the whole practice of like questioning the certainty of things is the only so you're you remove the basis for acting out of passion towards the thing and that basis is you must take it for granted it is yours that you are in
its control and it's gonna be there for as long as you want it to be and again if you if you if you have trouble grasping this thing take something simpler like say there is like a like a certain I don't know say undertaking if I comedian somebody comes to you and ask you for to invest a great amount of work or finances or whatever into something they well they won't reward you in a great sense so it's not like a gamble taking on risk to get more it's more like are you gonna build this
house are you gonna spend lots of time building whereby you agree did at any point of your work investment it will be torn down by somebody so you would consider you would well if you have no choice like you say you can't say no to it you must do it how would you be doing it how would you be going about that undertaking if fundamental sort of state of it it's not up to you if somebody can in the middle of your work in the middle of your commitment in the middle of your investment can
just wipe it away but you have no choice but you have to do it you can't say okay I'm not gonna even start that no you have to start so you realize you have no choice about doing things but you certainly have a choice about how much you get invested in your doing how much passion you allow how far you allowed for passion to take you out there in your project in your fantasy of I can't wait for this finished product and actually anything falls into this example I'm giving starting a family maintaining a family
ambition work study even be being a monk like for many people would become like oh I'm gonna develop this you know practicing great monastry and disciples like not necessarily crudely but kind of implicitly the monks life takes you this you know whatever ambitious undertaking of spreading Dhamma now if you keep yourself in check in a sense that you realize that doesn't matter how much you invest it doesn't matter how much you value it if it's taken away you won't be able to prevent it there will automatically then automatically it will sort of dampen the amount
of passion you can invest in it it will prevent you from from sort of losing perspective on it and you maintain that you can maintain that action you got everything whatever you are about to do even if it's a small thing not a massive undertaking that takes years or something like that just just a smaller day-to-day tasks if you don't forget that your life can be taken away at any point of that invested effort in a certain task means there won't be any passion to follow your effort of performing the task which means you're already
practicing a form of equanimity and indifference towards the task because you don't lose the perspective fundamental impermanence of it that's it you don't have to keep saying - so I was gonna be taking away it's gonna be taken away all you need to do is don't forget that it could be taken away that's it that's more than enough and you clarify that theme you clarify you fortify the basis for non passion non aversion and non distraction so that comes back to that sense of safety you feel safety when you ignore the risks of your Undertaker
that's what your safety is based upon but most people say it is based upon ignorance of the possibility of being it otherwise which is too unpleasant to develop so that's why getting wisdom and developing mental strength goes hand-in-hand mental strength as in Samadhi being able to maintain the composure goes hand-in-hand because if you're not able to maintain the composure of a certain theme the slightest site of often of an Ag theme that might cause anxiety you'll be looking away and that's a problem so that's why I stopped practicing sense restraint verbal distrained so then you
can actually have a mental restraint of running away like as the Buddha said like the the weak the weak horse or the elephant that they get scared you've just by the by the sound of the battle he doesn't even see it let alone gets into the fight he's already running away laying it just at the sound of the enemy's drums but it's not a given you are responsible for choosing to run away so if you run away at the sound of the enemy's drums okay start exposing yourself to the sound of enemy drums and we'd
hold the tendency to run away take it on a bit bit by bit then you might be able to take their own then you run away the sight of the drums at the side of the enemy then you work with that and then in the end you'll be in the battle and you won't be running away and it's not always a battle but when it does come you don't run away that's the point and you won't run away if your behavior is based on Sealand virtue if you're developing it right if you practice in sense
restraint you won't be leaking that container I mentioned early and that's how your sense of safety will then no no depend on presence or absence of enemy presence of absence of threat of threat no it would it will basically depend on your understanding of nature of things oh this is not mine so why would I need to be anxious about protecting it and everything your senses are not yours but again you can see our senses in online but I keep acting out of the sense of self sense of ownership of the senses so you can
say what you want oh yes everything is impermanent what the science has proven impermanence we all understand in permanence the good was right you still act out of your sense of appropriation which means what you're saying are just empty hollow phrases if you truly understand in permanence your impenetrable to fear and anxiety because things that are liable to be destroyed are not your concern and that's like that I remember the suit I don't know which one he was he was the that monk who was going around the forest saying what a joy what a delight
and people heard him mother monks heard him and they thought oh you must be thinking about his lay life and he's saying well the trying to like there was he's not happy being a monk so they when they told the Buddha they would have called him and said is it true that he was saying this is true why is that he's because you think about layoffs oh no no no quite the opposite he said when I used to be lame and I was a prince whatever in line to the throne and I didn't have a
moment of peace because I was always fearing for my life so I had guards guarding my palaces guarding my doors guarding me a day guarding me at night cuz he was a good likelihood somebody is gonna make an attempt in my life to take my place in line for the throne so I was living in constant fear constant anxiety constant defense of things that I deemed mine and things that I deemed I'm entitled to the throne and all the value and stuff that comes with but then he gave it a lot became a monk became
another hunt he said that now I'm living in this completely wild forest with wild animals tigers and elephants and snakes he's a good likelihood I might lose my life quickly yet I have zero fear because I understood the Dhamma as in he he stopped protecting things that are unprotectable your life your senses your existence he gave it up and he said it's a tremendous joy that's what he goes around the forest saying what a joy what a joy how much I used to defend the invest in self-defense through all sorts of gods and everything else
and I was so unhappy and now I'm liable to die next moment and I experienced complete happiness nothing for me to defend never was and that's pretty much all to it
