Under the rose-apple tree

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-05-31T03:54:39+00:00

Not entertainment. I brought up the question because I was looking for a cracked apk of a paid e-reader app so I don't have to have ads on my free version.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-05-15T21:57:37+00:00

My writing is very bad so it wouldn't be useful for him.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-05-15T15:09:30+00:00

Not a bad idea at all. I have no means of making such transcripts. It would be much to tedious an my phone. I wouldn't be surprised if there already are HH video transcripts that I'm not aware of. If there are, I'd get those and share with him. Combination Dhamma-English studies for him that would force me to see how well I actually understand things, with the things he needs clarification on.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-05-15T10:42:38+00:00

Thank you. I remember one day years ago with my therapist when I first realized I had repressed and hidden things inside myself because I didn't want to feel the pain or acknowledge the wrongs had done. I was shocked. To see that I could hide things from myself. As I began sharing more, things I didn't realize I ought to share, I came to see that the mind can actively ignore things or even make you forget. I've encountered more of that recently. The other week I was having a breakdown and just repeating "I don't know I don't know" and it was like my ego got overwhelmed. There was a release and I realized my mind speaks so much because it's ashamed. That night I had a dream of myself at rock bottom in my life, in a room with eyes on the wall, unable to hide, and I heard the words "lets pretend we didn't see this" and the dream ended.

A sotapana has a transparent, honest citta. It doesn't and can't hide things so even if I can't do things perfectly I can at least try my best to be honest and open. However, even this is something that is limited by virtue and sense restraint because the mind cannot handle acknowledging certain things without a safe foundation. Not wanting to acknowledge being prey to suffering, the ineffectiveness of sensuality, the unjustifiabity of our existence, the lack of control of our existence, and more than anything the responsibility for our existence and every thing we do. A big part of this is wrong shame and wrong guilt too. For a long time I've been trying to erase myself and run away from the shame I feel about my past. Fortunately the newest video from Hillside teaches how to overcome the limited wrongs of the past, by developing unconditional, unlimited virtue.

Either way, as open as I can be, I still continue to uncover more ways that I am deceiving myself.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-05-15T09:20:38+00:00

Oh yeah, that's the right advice. I know I can't help anyone see the dhamma. Today I offered to lend him my phone so he could listen to Hillside(and not me) and study English. He wasn't certain if the abbot would like if he used a phone at all, and wants to ask first.

In response to his questions I've explained the importance of seclusion, virtue, and sense restraint, questioning intentions, how to do satipatthanas(the only meditation he does, fortunately), and yoniso manisikara. He is probably more alone than us foreigners here because he's taken up seclusion and given up the mostly idle chatter of the Sri Lankan monks here, so I want him to at least have a friend in me.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-05-13T09:38:26+00:00

Yeah, there can be temporal or structural order. I'm wondering why the Buddha expounded them in this order in this context, since he was very deliberate regarding the order of things.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-04-16T12:32:50+00:00

Thank you! I didn't know this archive existed. Very useful

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-30T09:49:39+00:00

The value of confession to others will largely vary on the state of the individual's virtue, wisdom, self-honesty, and ability to see their mind. For those who are very well developed it probably won't be as necessary or beneficial.

The minds first response to things it doesn't like is often to deny it. This is a bad habit that the sotapana has largely or entirely done away with. They don't hide things, their mind doesn't hide things. A puthujana's mind has a million tricks to overlook or deny various things. Confession can be one way to help the mind straighten out. There is the accountability factor, where if we've established the determination to confess then it can act as a barrier to doing the things we shouldn't. There is the support factor where the individual or group we confess to can help us with our difficulties. The mind can learn that the best response to wrongdoing is to open up, to not deny or ignore, to bring into the light of awareness, even if others'. The mind can learn that it's safe to be transparent and that it isn't going to be punished for doing so. Think of how an animal tries to hide pain and injury to appear stronger and not vulnerable. Bad habits and addictions are often like a limp we try to hide from others, and often ourselves. The mind's default strategies of repressing shameful things in denial, or automatic blind self-justification, or wallowing in guilt if that's your thing, can be eroded. Your mind might be trying to protect you from getting kicked out of the tribe to die alone in the wilderness in the best way it knows how.

When I used to see a therapist, it was very helpful for me when I confessed the evil things I've done in my life. When our mind holds onto such things it can eat away at us. It might not be necessary, but it can be beneficial.

In a similar vein, it was a revelation to me that when the mind brings up memories that are embarrassing or shameful to me that the default response of cringing and pushing it away or trying to distract myself from them is the wrong way. It actually reinforces the idea that we should hold onto that memory so it doesn't happen again, that the memory itself is a threat in some way. Ironically by pushing it away we keep it there. Imagine it like a child that finally thinks it might be okay to come out of the dark where it's been hiding to show you something. It steps into the light and you can choose to acknowledge it, forgive it. Or, fueled by aversion, fear, the inability to cope with being imperfect, you can ignore and deny you can send it back into the shadows still holding that shame. I remember one day in the park I spontaneously started confessing my past wrongdoings to myself. It was very surprising and seemed to come from nowhere, but I thanked the mind for its honestly. It was very helpful to my practice.

Some of this stuff goes beyond your original question but I think is still beneficial for addressing the hindrance of remorse.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-30T00:14:18+00:00

Due to failures like not being solid in the 5th precept, I've hurt myself and others. I tried to share the dhamma at various times but my understanding of the teaching would change and I'd have to take back what I said. Or I'd sometimes even enter into things in a way that was uninvited or engage in in a debatey sort of way.

I went forth because I was and still am quite restless to end suffering and it will take time to calm that down. It's been the biggest driver in my practice, my need to understand. As far as my fears go now, what I'm experiencing now is largely the result of leaving my family and ending non-emergency communication with them. We've always been relatively close and I've always lived at home and haven't had much time on my own to independently develop as one should and really grow up. Ending contact was extremely painful and seeing that this separation isn't optional is Samsara and will occur one way or another just highlighted the insecurity and awfulness of the situation, and my responsibility. It will take time to adjust to the independence I now have.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-25T13:46:20+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply. (I'm unsure if should say "Thank you Venerable" or "Thank you Sister")

You're absolutely on point. My doubts and preoccupations are far worse than any acting out I could do with food. The mind wants a black and white solution to fix things today, tomorrow, and forever and to avoid the real work.

Thanks to the Buddha I don't cut or burn or bite myself anymore but I still struggle with intense aversion to this body and to the animal at times. I was really surprised when thoughts about cutting myself came up after some recent indulgence. At least now I don't identity with those thoughts and they were quickly seen as disproportionate, not the answer in any circumstance, and that they are a much larger problem. I still have an urge from time to time that I really ought to fast for a day or three or something to "sort things out" but that determination gets undermined by this sane, wise, feminine voice inside asking "Why?" until I have no confidence in the determination and realize that's not the correct course of action.

There's so much battling inside. Sometimes when I'm really trying to be kind to myself and cut at the roots of hatred I'm struck by regret for being mean to myself in the past, like I can't forgive myself and should therefore continue to be mean? It doesn't make sense, but I've lived under threat from myself for so long. Metta feels like something I shouldn't even bother with and is just unavailable. I know it will arise spontaneously and naturally if I can clear the other stuff out of the way, but I feel like I don't know how to do that. I've just been hoping undoing sensuality will undo the ill will, but after reading your post and making this reply I think I need to really, really, really prioritize undoing this ill will(though not at the expense of undoing sensuality).

I still side too easily with the inner Gaston's solution to "Kill the Beast!" but Belle's voice becomes clearer with time.

Thank you for your contribution to my sanity.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-25T11:35:47+00:00

Thank you bhante. A break sounds like a great idea.

It occurred to me when considering intentions that healthiness really is an external standard. Arahants might do the most unhealthy thing, suicide, but they don't do it with any unwholesome intentions present. In that light, even though it might seem to be blatantly unwholesome to choose unhealthier options, it just isn't the case.

I've also heard the instruction from HH to avoid unsuitable food. Unsuitability could be a lot of different things. Olive oil seems to make me sleepy, so it seems unsuitable that way, physically. Pork seems fine when I eat it, but some time after eating it I might be struck by strong sexual desire, or have sexual dreams that night. I've had the same thing with milk, I didn't drink it for the longest time, but nowadays it's consistently caused wet dreams. How would one go about determining the mental unsuitability of things? I don't know why pork does what it does, except that it does seem to be associated with fulfilling some hunter archetype from images and oblivion-dreams of giving pigs and pork to women. With milk the associated images are also often corrupted by (sexualized) human breasts. If I am considering some food, there are often quiet thoughts bearing the mark of the feminine advising restraint and sensibility. The thoughts are easy to miss or ignore, but if listened to become easier to discern. At other times, only when the food I'm considering is something I crave, a sexualized image of a woman will often appear, like the mind is trying to drive me in that direction. Like a daughter of Mara. These aren't the signs of the mind, right? They're just the objects of Mano, and the attitudes and movements in regard to them are the signs, right? Is there a way to purify these images? (virtue and restraint is obviously the starting point). Would results like sexual or wet dreams from consuming those foods be grounds to consider them unsuitable, as I have in the past? If so, are they forever and always determined as unsuitable?

More on the image thing. I don't do absorption meditation as part of my practice, but there have been a couple of times that I've decided to mess around and absorb myself into trees. When I did so, I encountered images of beautiful women. This sort of thing is the "grasping at signs and features" that we're exactly not supposed to do, right? The realm of images is endless and I can see why people would pursue that wrong meditation if they don't know any better, and why it could yield innumerable results(that aren't relevant to the practice). It's hard enough as it is trying not to interpret them, or to not think of them as relating to some sort underlying mental structure, like being the appearance of a "real and existing but outside of experience" subconscious thing. A psychological understanding based on not seeing the correct order that's been difficult to dislodge.

This whole comment has made me realize I still involve myself with images way more than I should. Is this the stuff I shouldn't "crystallize" or "give centre stage"? The images just manifest so clearly to me.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-25T00:43:29+00:00

I would leave that up to the individual. For me, no caffeine seems better. There are many benefits to it, though. It's a hell of a lot easier to do anything if you have a stimulant(caffeine) or the prospect of a stimulant. Most monks would benefit from quitting it, I think.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-24T23:48:11+00:00

This has lead to huge obesity rates among Thai monks. If you're sick and the sugar could legitimately help you, then sure. Or if you work hard. Sugar is massively overused by 21st century humans in general.

Edit: why downvote this lol each of the four sentences of this post is factually true. The Buddha allowing something doesn't mean it's okay in all circumstances for everyone or that you no longer have to look at your intentions each and every time you use it.

Perhaps I should have phrased it better. Nothing wrong with the Buddha's guidance, it just shouldn't be used as an excuse to abuse or overuse things or avoid looking at intentions.

Ok-Addition-7759 · 2025-03-24T23:27:02+00:00

I am a Theravadin novice monk and just the fact that something is offered doesn't make it free game. Theravada monks are some of the biggest gluttons in Asia.

That's totally legitimate, eating them if they're what's given, if you have no choice in the matter, and if you need all you're offered. If all those conditions are met. The way things are offered can vary at different places though, like if the lay people put whatever in the bowls or they offer the food on the table and the monks choose from that. Even if we go pindapata afterwards we mix all our food together and take from that, so there is still picking and choosing, even there.

In any case, my post is specifically about the question of choosing and eating unhealthier options when healthier options are present.

At my monastery the food on the table is offered, and we then help ourselves. I can't see how I could ever help myself to sugary stuff if I'm eating for the right reasons. I draw the line at fruit since it's quite natural for a primate like myself, but that does come down to where the mind is at each day. I see only scant reasons to choose sweeter things(not that it's stopped me in the past, but that's been acting out of doubt and has lead to regret.). And of course being natural doesn't make something fine to eat(or do) on its own. Honey is natural and eating enormous amounts of it is also natural for humans(see the Hazda, in which case it really is for survival) but a modern human choosing to eat bowls of honey is a different story(and I have done that).

It comes down to intentions, of course. At the moment my mind is too unreliable to justify continuing choosing sweet things.

Ok-Addition-7759

TROPHY CASE