Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video link: YouTube
Āya Bhuwan: may you live long!
Welcome to episode two of Being Integrity, where we establish a firm foundation for your progress in this series. Why is integrity so difficult? Sometimes when we try to explain it to people, it’s as if we’re speaking a foreign language. But actually, integrity has been trained out of us; it has been socialized out of us; it has been basically beaten out of us by a society surrounding us that’s completely out-of-integrity itself.
The government is spying on everybody, they’re lying to the press, to the Congress; businesses are stabbing each other in the back; there’s all kinds of covert wars and stuff going on all over the planet—and these are the leaders! So if the leaders are like that, then imagine what the rest of the population must be. In school, it’s supposed to be about education; but it’s actually just about social conditioning, about training easy-to-manage workers for the industrial corporations.
So we’re not really getting what we’re promised in any area of life: government is corrupt, business is corrupt, school is corrupt, families are corrupt; people are cheating on each other, nobody’s following any kind of moral standards. It’s very rare, and when they do, it’s only because of external coercion like a church, or because they’re afraid of getting caught.
So we live in a world where being out-of-integrity is pervasive, and to get along in that world we often find ourselves compromising what we know is right and wrong, in order to get by. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. But this is the typical consciousness that we find in the world today. We want to do something about this; we want to encourage and help people to regain their integrity, and to become a fully integrated, whole, fully functional human being.
Why? Because without integrity, without the intention to reduce suffering or eliminate suffering for ourselves and others, we are less than fully human. A full human being—human being in the full sense of the term—is one who is committed to reducing or eliminating suffering for everyone. Of course, this is a Buddha, or at least an arahant: a fully Self-realized person.
So a full human being is something very far above the average human being of today. Yet without integrity, we cannot even take a small step toward that platform. We’re stuck in the subhuman consciousness of thinking we are the body; we’re thinking we are some abstract designation related to our social or economic or political status. That is a conditioned state of consciousness. It’s not real consciousness; it’s consciousness in terms of some symbolic representation or some abstract relationship that we take on and say, “This is my self.”
We’re going to get into this, or actually we have already gone into a deep analysis of how we construct the false ego in our Cup of Tea series, so we’re not going to repeat all that here. But what we are going to say is that you should develop better integrity. Everything about your life will improve if you do. So this is our message in this series, that “Please improve, increase, enhance and develop your integrity, and you will be very pleasantly surprised at how much your life will improve.”
Now there are a few things you need to know before we begin the actual training part of this series. And the first thing is that this is not ordinary education; this is not a regular online course. This is what we call ontological education. It’s not regular education, and it’s not training. Nobody’s going to stand over you and make sure that you do what’s in the lessons. You have to be responsible yourself; you have to take the initiative yourself to develop your integrity to a higher degree.
And furthermore, we are talking about a subject that is rarely examined in Western society, and that is, being. People talk about having and doing and knowing and thinking, but they don’t really talk about being. So we’re going to have to introduce a whole new language, a whole network of technical terminology about being. That is so that we can describe the subject matter of this course, which is being: how you are being, and what you are being. And that’s why it’s called Being Integrity.
So there are a few prerequisites, and we’ll cover those in the next slide. But for right now I want you to know this is ontological education—it’s about being. And when we cover a point, you should take that information and think about it. Contemplate it, review it in your mind, reflect upon it, and look into your own life, your own experience, and see if you can find it, or evidence for it, in your own experience. This is called phenomenological self-analysis, and it’s a very important part of our training.
In fact, without it the training doesn’t work. You have to do the work; nobody can do it for you. No matter how clever a presenter I am—which is not very, really—but as far as I can I’ll give you the information. You have to do something with it: you have to sit down and do the work. You have to do the contemplation. Turn off the phone, lock the door, tell everybody not to bug you for a while. Sit down and contemplate this material; look into yourself and try to understand how this reflects in your own experience.
You have to be ready to examine your assumptions about life. Your assumptions about life are the things that you assume to be true without really having any proof. The prime example is the existence of “I”, the self, the ego. We assume that we have a permanent self, or actually an eternal self—the soul. In western language, in Western culture, religion and philosophy the existence of the soul is taken for granted.
But can you show me your soul, or anybody’s soul? Can you show me my soul? Can you actually observe the soul? Can you prove the existence of the soul? No, of course not. That’s because the soul is an imaginary entity: the self, the ego, the “I”, the personality, the person is an imaginary thing we constructed in our own minds out of our sense impressions. And we’ve already covered how we do that in great detail in the video on the Mūla-pariyāya Sutta, the root sequence. And so we’re not going to go into that in detail right now, but we’re going to refer you to that video.
Now what I want you to think about, and what I want you to take a look at is to be open to examining your assumptions. Just be ready, if anything we say clashes with your beliefs about life, to take a look at it and see, “Well, is that really so? Can I know this, can I prove this? Or am I merely assuming it?” as in the case of the self, the “I”?
The Buddha says, anicca dukkha anāttā. These are the three characteristics of reality. Anicca means impermanent, dukkha means suffering, and anāttā means no-self. The Buddha says, “There is no self or anything related to a self.” In other words, no possessions either. These are all illusory, these are simply designations, they’re simply labels that we concoct out of words. They don’t have any real existence.
Just like a corporation: I was making the example, a bunch of people get together and put some words on paper and get some other people to sign it, and boom they have a corporation. Where is that corporation exactly? Can you show it to me, can you prove its existence? “Well, it says right here on this sheet of paper…” No, those are just words on paper. There is no corporation; there is no such thing as a country, there is no such thing as a club, a group, a class of people. These are all simply labels, they’re all simply words. And we act as if they are real, but they’re actually only assumptions.
So in this course, one of the things we have to do is take a really good close look at our assumptions about life: what we assume to be true, or what we take for granted about life that is actually just a label, just words, just a description of what we would like to be true, instead of what really is.
So this is ontological education. Now to get the most out of this series you really should review our previous series in the Skillful Living series. There are four of them: Skillful Living 1 is the Foundation Series, and that deals with our assumptions, our background knowledge and the truths that we accept as true, before going into any of the other subjects that we cover in any other series, including this one. So you should definitely review the Foundation Series. I’ll give a live link on the YouTube version of this, otherwise you have to go look it up.
The second one is Becoming Genius (aka Matrix Learning). Now Becoming Genius is based on my own experience of how to learn. First we have to learn how to learn. If you try to go through this series without having assimilated the learning technology that we give in Becoming Genius, you won’t get much out of it. You won’t know how to look up your misunderstood terms; you won’t know how to model the systems that we’re giving; you won’t understand what an ontological model is; you won’t understand what a terministic screen is; and so on and so forth.
We’re going to assume in this series that you know these things. So you better review that material, otherwise you’re going to be lost. Because we’re using a lot of terminology out of that series to speed up the learning process.
Number three is Being in the World. Being in the World is an ontological analysis of ordinary life. We’re going to take a lot of the conclusions from Being in the World as assumptions in this series. We go through everything in detail in Being in the World and the accompanying study series, that analyze and ask questions for you to think about. So until you’ve gone through that material—at least have acquaintance with it, if not a deep realization of it—a lot of what’s in this series is going to seem really far out, and it’s going to contradict your sense of who you are, what you are, what you’re doing here.
The Buddha’s teaching is not like any other field of knowledge in existence. It’s completely unique and special. So because this series is based on the Buddha’s teaching, we take as given many things that are counterintuitive for the average Western person, the average english-speaking person. So you really should review Being in the World to get a handle on our background assumptions.
And finally, Call of the Friend. Call of the Friend is a series about what happens when you get the opportunity to investigate and experience transcendental wisdom. That’s what the teaching of the Buddha is: transcendental wisdom, beyond all other systems of knowledge, beyond oneness, beyond nothingness, beyond everything that’s ever existed before on this planet Earth. And that’s why I became a monk, because the Buddha’s teaching is just beyond everything.
So the insights from that teaching are something that most people never get a chance to come in contact with. This series, and our other work, gives you an opportunity to really hang out with the Buddha’s teaching in a different way—not in a formal or religious setting, but simply going over the questions of life, and profiling the value of the opportunity to hang out with somebody who actually knows these things, and has realized some of them. So please go through these four Skillful Living series: the Foundation Series, Becoming Genius, Being in the World and Call of the Friend.
We considered these prerequisites to this series, and we’re going to be building on a lot of the ideas that are presented in detail in those prior series. So do yourself a favor: If you want to get the maximum value from Being Integrity, then go through the previous series.
Now besides the background material, there are four important principles that you need to keep in mind when viewing this series. And the first one is to show up fully present. In other words, when you watch this video, don’t have any distractions; don’t let anything interrupt you; turn off your phone, turn off the beeper, lock your door, make sure you’re not going to be disturbed; and concentrate on the experience of watching. Because you need to be fully present, and have your full attention focused on the video in order to get this material; it’s very deep. You have to participate with integrity, and integrity means wholeness, fullness. So that means you need to have your whole self available to this material, to confront the meaning and to reflect on it, and see how it shows up in your experience.
You also need to be yourself authentically. In other words, don’t think, “Well, what are my friends gonna think if I start talking about this integrity stuff?” Hey, your friends don’t need to know anything about it. Your friends are going to be surprised very pleasantly if you get anything out of this, and you change and improve your integrity. So they’ll be pleased; but just leave them out of it for now. You participate in this experience, being authentically yourself—what you really think and who you really are. That’s what will do you the most good.
Now, another thing is, you have to look up and clear your misunderstood terms as discussed in the Becoming Genius series. This is so important, I wish I could stress properly how important this is. Well, how important is it? It’s like if your hair was on fire. OK? It’s that important. You know, if your hair was on fire, you would be pretty focused on putting it out, wouldn’t you? OK, so if you encounter a misunderstood term, you should be that concerned about getting it cleared up and properly understood. Well, what is a misunderstood term? Watch Becoming Genius, will you please? Watch Becoming Genius, especially the second one on Duplication, because that’s the one that covers looking up misunderstood terms.
You have to look up your misunderstood terms. I used a word a little while ago, ontology. Can you define ontology? If you can’t, you need to look it up. Oh that’s a not-understood term. A misunderstood term would be if I say, “Look it up.” What’s the definition of up? Ah, see? You can’t quote it, can you? You have to look it up in the dictionary, because that misunderstanding will build on previous misunderstandings that you have, especially from school, and it will cause you to be to not be fully present with your full attention and be able to absorb the material.
So I know this from experience, because I started looking up words in high school, and I went from a C student to an A student, and got perfect scores in my college board tests, OK? So if you look up your misunderstood words you will become a lot smarter, and that’s what we want.
Now further, it will really help if you are committed to something greater than yourself. In other words, you need to have a reason for living, a cause, a purpose greater than just ‘getting what I want’ or ‘being happy,’ or whatever small purpose is within the scope of your human life. You need to have something bigger than you that you’re committed to. Well, why is that? Because if you’re only committed to yourself that makes you selfish, by definition; and a selfish person cannot have integrity. Well, why is that? Because they don’t care about anybody else. And we have already defined integrity as someone who’s committed to reducing or eliminating suffering both for themselves and others. So you need to be committed to, and care enough about others that you want to reduce or eliminate suffering for them as well.
That’s another part of what it takes to be a full human being. So if you don’t have something beyond yourself that you’re fully committed to—for example, I’m fully committed to the saṅgha of the Buddha; I’ve become a monk; I’ve taken refuge for life in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the saṅgha. So that’s being committed to something greater than yourself. I’m showing by example how you do that. But it doesn’t have to be becoming a monk, it could be your family, it could be your business, it could be something, a cause—anything that’s bigger than you. You need to be fully committed to that, and to share the benefits of what you learn here in that commitment as well, in that relationship. That will get you the maximum benefit from this course. Because you need to be bigger than just an ordinary human being.
Finally, you need to be willing to be at cause over changing your being. This is a hugely important point. We discussed this earlier, in the video on Being and Becoming in the Foundation Series. That if you’re going to stop suffering—even for yourself, what to speak of anybody else—you have to become something different than what you are today. It’s like, are you suffering? “Yes.” So if you stay the same you’re going to continue to suffer, right? So you have to change your being, you have to become something different than what you are today to stop your suffering, and to also help others stop theirs.
See how logical it is? It’s totally logical. And not only that, life experience tells us that this is so. Because then why would we be interested in a better job, a better car, nicer clothes, a better relationship or so on and so forth, or improving in any area of life, if we’re not willing to change our being? The fact is, we have to die to who we are today to become the person we want to be tomorrow. This is just a fact of life. We have to be willing to let go of who we are now—the person that we wound up being, often by circumstance or by accident—and become the person we really want to be. For the future depends on our changing our being; both our future and the future of the people around us. So you be willing to be at cause over changing your being to get the full benefit of this series.
Let’s talk some more about terminology. Our Being Integrity series uses a certain technical terminology. And you might think—and other people might even agree—that we could say things in a much simpler way. We could use terminology that’s a lot more down-to-earth or whatever. But this is actually not true. We’re trying to make certain distinctions between the ordinary way of being, and a new way of being that’s based on complete integrity. So in order to do that, we have to use certain terms; and we have to use those terms in a certain way.
Let me give you an example if I say the word presenting, what does it sound like; a show, right? “And now presenting Rocky and Bullwinkle…” or something like that. But what if I’m a doctor? If a doctor uses the word presenting he’s talking about the symptomology of a patient: “The patient was presenting warts,” for example, or sniffles or whatever the symptoms are. So when a doctor uses the word presenting he uses it in a different sense than someone who is talking about a television show. Why? Because the doctor has a network of terminology describing the states of the patient, which is very useful for his work. And sometimes this includes using ordinary words in a special way, or using special words that have no equivalent outside the field of medicine. If I say, for example, a tracheotomy—that has really no meaning outside of medicine. Now I could say, “We’re going to shove a tube down your throat,” but that wouldn’t really give the technical meaning, the same meaning that tracheotomy does.
So, what we’re talking about here is creating a model of terms that describe how a particular subject works. In the case of a doctor, for example, their terminology describes how symptomology and how different treatments work; how the human body and metabolism work. In the case of an airline pilot, their terms describe how flying works, how airplanes work, how air traffic control and navigation, and so on, work in the context of flying an airplane. Same with a musician, or even a plumber; they each have their shop talk; they each have their specific terminology used to describe their area of expertise and specialization.
So also in the science of being. We have a specific network of terminology, beginning with the word ontology and ontics. You should look these words up. Get really clear on them, and whenever we introduce a new term, we’ll describe it briefly. Maybe we’ll define it in detail if it’s required by the presentation. But it’s up to you to look up these words and to understand what we’re doing with them. We’re trying to build a network, a model that shows how the process of being works.
Now, the Buddha has already done this. He’s built a model which is called Dependent Origination—paṭicca-samuppāda—and we’re going to go into this model, and the building blocks of it, and the terminology and so forth, very very deeply in this series. Because it is the working part of how we change our being. We’re changing our being all the time anyway; but we’re changing it in a way that is not based on full knowledge of being and becoming. When we get that knowledge, then we see how we could use this thing in a much better way. If I have a car and a set of tools, and I take the tools and I start messing around on the car, it’s more likely I’m going to break something than fix it, if I don’t know what I’m doing. But if I’ve been to mechanic school, and I have all the manuals at hand, and I know exactly what I’m doing, then I can fix the car. Similarly, if you know the process of being, even though everyone is involved in this process already, if you have deep knowledge of it, you can use it so much more effectively, just like the trained mechanic can use those tools much more effectively than the weekend shade-tree mechanic.