Before I go to the question, I'm not sure I agree with this statement. OK? "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities." Now I know a lot of beginners who simply don't know the possibilities. You give me somebody I'm going to teach carpentry to, I'm very good at carpentry, somebody could say I'm a bit of an expert. You give me some brand new person I'm going to teach carpentry to, and they may not know really the possibilities of carpentry in the way that I know them. I would know how to build cupboards, tables, boxes, bookcases, you name it, seven-cornered card tables, tell me have you ever seen a seven-cornered card table in your life before? OK? I'm a bit of an expert in carpentry, and I know lots of possibilities with carpentry, but a beginner doesn't know these possibilities. So I can not agree with this so-called Zen master's quote.
Now as to the question, "How can we avoid, break open routines in every day life in meditation?" I assume that these are routines that we have in our lives that are negative, that are not beneficial. And how can we avoid them, how can we not do them?
One of the main ways of avoiding your past unbeneficial conditioning is to absolutely totally know the fire that is there in it. OK? Yesterday was the day in the hall when I hold out fire, and it's only through knowing it exactly, the burning that it brings, the difficulties that are created, all this and that, that we finally let go. We may let go a little, but we hold on "it's me, it's me, it's mine, it's mine!" So we have to actually know the Dukkha of the routine, of whatever it is that we're doing that's unbeneficial, we have to know it clearly. If we know the Dukkha of something then we don't want it anymore.
Let's take an example of small children, little kids, two years old, whatever, they don't know about lots of Dukkha things, right? Often they don't know what fire is, they don't know what dangers are here, what dangers are there. The first time any little kid burns themselves it's usually because they didn't know what it was, but they're always careful the next time, more or less always, 99% whatever. If they've seen the fireplace as a place that's hot and they've burned themselves once, they don't go up to the fireplace again just to play with it again and get burnt again. If they are normal kids, they absolutely don't, there's a clear understanding.
Now when we think of this, and the word "Understanding" as well, there's kind of three levels of understanding. One is the understanding that we take in through the ears and through the eyes. We read something or we're told something. There can also be a little bit of understanding in basic touch as well, etc. Then there's an understanding level when we think about what we've been told or what we hear. We think about, we reflect, we try to understand it more clearly. And then there's the understanding on a deeper level where we actually know something, we don't have to think about it anymore we actually know it.
Now some people can jump from the first level to the third, but it's kind of rare. The little kid who touches the fire, the parent says "Don't get close to the fire, it can burn you!" But the kid doesn't know what's going on, goes and touches it, it burns, "Ooh!" So the kid's understanding jumped from the words and all, to the experience, and there was a knowing. It is possible that the kid never really thought about fire, thought about what they were told. But that type of understanding growth is kind of rare, for most people they have to think about something before they actually know it, other than extreme cases like this.
So we've got to actually think about the Dukkha, we've got to reflect on the Dukkha, we actually have to see it as well. It's not just thinking about it, but look at the stress in your body, this is what the body awareness that we explain is so important for. Imagine you're standing in line to get your food at breakfast, and somebody up front just took two pieces of Papaya. You're at the back of the line, and you love Papaya, and that means there may not be enough for you! Right? So aversion can come up towards this person up front, but the minute there's aversion of that nature coming up, there's something in the body that you just created. You have just created your body to have stress, you created it yourself.
Now if you can pick up on this body awareness, you will then pick up on the fact that you have aversion in the mind. This is the same old thing I talk about every retreat; sitting in a restaurant, eating, talking with some friends, and so on, somebody walks in that we don't like; the body awareness is important, to pick up on that subtlety of when you have got this resistance, when you don't like, when you have got stress, when you have got all this sort of negative stuff. That also helps you, because, after all, why do you want that?
Why do you want to walk around like some people do? You know, you can tell, you can go anywhere, and if there are enough people walking down the street, or people at the beach or on the boat, you can see. I'm sure each one of you can see, some people who are just totally stressed out by the way they're holding their body. What do you want to do that for? People grind their teeth so hard that their teeth fall out. Fingernails, classic case. You know, it's like every different person may develop a certain area of their body where the stress comes out, and if I'm more mindful about this, that helps us to say, "I don't want this anymore, this is Dukkha. This is Dukkha." So it's not only understanding the Dukkha of the action and the result, but understanding the Dukkha that's coming right to you at that time. And then you may not want it anymore.
You can always ask yourself other questions, too, in the sense of when you know that something isn't so good for our life and you want to change it. You have got to ask yourself some questions, well, "What else could I do instead of that?" Because again, I think earlier I talked about that there's a kind of tradeoff sometimes. Did I mention the tricycle and bicycle here? Yeah OK, there's a level of trading off at times, that it's often just not possible to avoid these old routines we have, to break out of them, to stop doing some of that unbeneficial stuff. For so many people it's impossible for them to change, unless they have an option of something better to do. Something better to do.
Now in this way you have got to get very innovative as well, it's not just with yourself, but it could be with your family, when they want to encourage you to go a certain way that's not the best way. It's like on one occasion, one of my brothers said to me, "Want to come see a baseball game?," he had tickets for a game. Now I used to enjoy baseball a lot as a kid, and as a basic sport for physical exercise it's not too bad. But as to watching baseball games and sitting there for 2 1/2 hours doing basically nothing except watching other people exercise, that's not for me anymore. So when he asked me I said no thanks. He got a bit like, "Hmm, what's wrong with you?"
This was in the early days of our meditating, or at least of him knowing that we meditate, and so he got a bit irritated and all. I'm not sure I handled that particular occasion that well, that was so early. But after that, I would get in the question first, "Hey Mike, do you want to go walk in the mountains today?" Because he had some beautiful mountains close by, where he used to live. And he enjoys walking in the mountains. So if I got that one in first, then he wasn't going to ask me to go see a baseball game or do something else that I don't really want to do. And he would pick up on that. So you have to be innovative with your friends, you have to be innovative with yourself. When you see some negative conditioning that has the possibility of arising, ask yourself, "Well wait a minute, what else could I do?" Something better, something more profitable.
Remind yourself about death, also. How often do we have to say that, probably never enough! Remind yourself that you could die at any moment. What do you want to be doing that for? How often we get asked to watch TV with the families. I don't want to die in front of a TV. I don't want to die there. Use the Death Reflection, "I don't want to die that way, I don't want to die in front of a TV show."
Many of you have heard that before. For those of you who haven't done the 20 day retreat, I give an entire talk on Death, on the value of Death Reflection, looking at it in different ways, looking at how it develops the Paramis, etc. I say somewhere in there that I don't want to die sitting watching a TV show. I'd rather die sitting and meditating. So this is also something that can help us break open our routines. That we actually encourage ourselves to do something better. We encourage ourselves that we don't want to die doing this activity.
Now, bringing that in a little heavier, so to speak, tying that into what we were talking about before regarding our next Rebirth, preciousness and this and that, OK, some of you may not know that Buddhism does teach that it's your thought, at the moment of death, that has a very powerful push towards your next Rebirth.
There is a Buddhist story which is a very odd example of this. There was a Queen who was a very good person, very good, and a very good supporter of the Buddha. She was not partially enlightened yet, but she was a very good supporter. She did one thing in her life that was no so skillful, just one thing, that was all. Everything else was wonderful. Now, as it turned out, at the moment of death, she thought about that one thing with regret. Because that came up at the moment of death, it had the power to take her in the direction that was deserving for that thought, actually that experience, that Kamma - which was down to hell. Yet her time there was going to be very short-lived, extremely short-lived, because the Kamma wasn't strong enough to keep her there.
As the story goes, the King comes to the Buddha and says, "Oh, please tell me where my wife has been reborn, which heaven realm is she in, because she was such a lovely person." This was common in those days, and the Buddha would actually tell people where some of their relatives were reborn and whatever. The Buddha did not answer his question, but instead gave him a Dhamma talk and sent him home, ignoring the question. As the king was leaving, he remembered, "Oh, oh, I forgot to ask the Buddha about my wife, I'll have to come back again tomorrow." Then the next day he did the same thing, and the Buddha did not answer again and gave him a nice rousing Dhamma talk and sent him off. And he remembered after, "Oh I forgot again," he thought he had forgotten. The Buddha was not answering him because he didn't want the king to be so distraught, because he knew after only seven days, his wife was going to be reborn in the heaven realms from all her good merit. On the seventh day the king came and the Buddha answered the King where his wife was.
Now whether we believe this or not, this is what's taught, that your last thoughts of death will propel you, will pull that side of your Kamma. And this is again why Wise Reflection is so valuable. It is important to train your mind to consistently think of good things. The other day I was talking about dreams and nightmares and things, and mentioned that how my particular thoughts always moved into a Compassion and Lovingkindness wish when I thought I was going to die. That's very nice, for me that's very nice to see that that comes up as an automatic thing in what we normally call our subconscious, in sleep and dreams where most people are not able to control anything.
So I feel that if that comes up in my dreams, then I have a very good chance that it will come up automatically when the time really does come that I die. Therefore that will pull my good Kamma to give me a good Rebirth. So this is something that's very valuable to know about as to Buddhist teachings. And if it is true, then you want to train your mind to always have the ability to bring up a good thought quickly. Now if you're watching TV, videos and whatever else, can this happen so easily if you die watching the TV? You have got to ask yourself, if you're still into that, you have got to ask yourself is this what you want, is this a chance you want to take and so on. Generally we think we're not going to die sitting on the couch, but it's happened to other people. And so you don't really know when it's going to happen.
One thing that seems to strike a lot of people when I mention it, is that we had a friend years ago who told us he was in a Buddhist meditation center, I believe it was in Australia somewhere. He was in this center, it was not a retreat time, he was washing dishes, and talking with another person at the center. As they were talking and washing dishes, the other person fell down dead. Poof! Forty-odd years old, no history of any heart disease or anything else. Just heart stopped. Poof! Just fell down dead, in a meditation center, washing dishes. It's something to think about, that you really don't know when. So when you're getting caught up with something that may not be so beneficial, remind yourself, is this the way you want to die? What could happen, if Buddhism is true, if that last moment's going to propel you into your next life, how do you want it to be?