Where Is Your Boundary?

Welcome, everyone. Great to see everyone today. Today, maybe we'll start with any questions you may have. Normally I give dharma talk right here, but I want to check with you guys and see if you have any questions about your practice. . Don't be shy. No? Everyone's shy. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Is dharma, like, about our soul's journey or... Dharma? Yeah. Is it about having a mindful, sense of being mindful today, practice as far as what we're doing? So our practice here, the meditation, there are many type of meditation out there. So our meditation is to train our mind to be present and to be open-hearted. Because that will help you become less reactive as you become more self-aware.

Because when you're present, when you pay attention, you become more aware. So, all Buddhist meditation is about increasing the depth of self-awareness. So the most basic fundamental practice is to train our mind to be present. because we've been trained throughout lives to be in the past, regretting, future, warring, or just ruminating. The problem with rumination is that we tend to ruminate negatively with anxiety, fear, frustration, right? So, by coming back to the present moment, we recognize that, and then we can become more proactive versus reactive, right? And science is now, I share this on our band app, it's proven over and over again, there's like over 20,000 studies done on mindfulness alone, and that it strengthens, physiologically, our prefrontal cortex. Our brain changes,

actually, simply by meditating to be present. We learn to become more reasonable, more logical, more in control, where we can regulate our emotion. You know, where our regular tendency is when we're stressed, our amygdala reacts, hyper-reacts. And we treat all stressful events as if there's a threat to my life, because that's how we survive in the prehistoric days, by treating all threats as threat to our life. That increases our adrenaline, our cortisol level, which damages our body and the mind. So, by training our mind to be present, we are strengthening that executive function of our brain, okay. So those are just at the relative level. The dharma is what we call as a name for what the Buddha has taught, and it also represents the absolute truth.

So when we're practicing authentic Buddha dharma, our devotion really is to the truth, to

the absolute truth. There are relative conventional truths that we are, we can recognize with a linear dualistic mind, but there's absolute truth, which give you the answer to what is this? The question that I threw out there during our meditation. Anybody find the answer to that? As you're meditating? Have you ever asked yourself that question? What is this? I. What are you, what are you claiming to be me? Majority of the people claim their body as me. And their mind as me. But when you take a look, when you take a closer look, your body is constantly changing, right? Constantly changing. You're no longer the same body 10 years ago, down to the self-structure level. You're a completely different person. As soon as you claim yourself as this body, I am this body, you've already changed.

So you gotta reclaim it. Right? So how about your mind? It's a constant flow of thoughts. So as soon as you claim that to be me,

it's already changed again. So everything is changing. Everything is flowing. But we have this ideal of a self. Right? That is me. Right? Everybody has this "I-ness" right here, right? Versus what is not me. There's that boundary. Where do you set your boundary? Between me and what is not me. Where is your boundary? Where do you set that? Because there's obviously me and what's not me, right? Have you thought about that? Where am I putting my boundary at? Yeah. Depending on where you... A lot of people have different boundaries. Yes, ma'am? Is it like your spirit or... But I was thinking when you were asking that question, is it like my spirit or God or Buddha?

That's for you to find out. You have to see it for yourself. I can give you the answer, but it's a concept. Okay. Even if you understand it, that we're not an individual self, our essence is one essence.

One mind. It's another way of describing it, but it becomes concept. As soon as we put words to describe the effluent, which is non-dual, non-conceptual, non-linear, but when you're thinking in the linear, localized, dualistic, that we are used to, because that's what you needed in order to survive, you can't see, non-dual, the absolute truth.

But by seeing it, realizing it, we call it enlightenment, for lack of a better term, is when you see the truth, the truth that liberates you. For example, we talk about the three dharma seals. Three dharma seals that kind of summarizes Buddha's dharma teaching. And this is where it differentiates Buddhist philosophy from others. Now there are a lot of similarities, but at his time, it was the seals that made Buddhism

what Buddhism is. The law of impermanence. Nowadays, it's really easy to explain this because we know from science that everything is in constant movement, right? If you look at the level of atom, electrons are always moving, you know, even the quarks inside, the center is always in the movement. Everything is in movement. There's nothing that just stands still, doesn't change. Everything is changing, right? That's the law of impermanence. And not only changing, it's changing instantaneously. We don't see that because we need to be able to have a constant view. But if you actually see the reality, everything is just gone.

Everything is past. As soon as you experience this, as you experience it, it becomes past. What's past? Something that doesn't exist, right? Past no longer exists, right? And future doesn't exist yet, right? So if you look at it logically, past doesn't exist. Future doesn't exist. What really

exists? What is it that exists? Right now. Right now? What is that? This. This? Is that a moment? Because as soon as you say now, it's no longer. Right now. Yeah. Yes. Yes. You're kind of getting it, you know, because it's always there. In the context of the now, everything's coming and going. Right? Law of impermanence.

And the second dharma seal is law of non-self. Non-self. Meaning there's no independent, inherent self. Is there anything that exists independently by itself, without any dependency or anything else? Can you think of one? Nothing, right? Even our body is dependent on how many cells? Three billion or something?

But there's always conditions, two or more conditions, that allow something to manifest and to exist.

And those conditions depend on additional conditions, and it just goes on and on and on and on and on. Everything that exists is existing based on supporting condition. Everything is conditional. That's what it means. So if everything changes based on conditions that create it, everything just comes and goes. That's what you can recognize. Even logically, you can understand that everything just comes and goes based on the supporting condition that allowed to exist. When it doesn't exist, it goes away. Everything goes. Everything comes and goes.

So if you see that, if you directly experience that, do you know what comes up? When you truly experience impermanence, which is anicca, non-self, anatta. Do you know what comes up? Do you know how you know if you truly realize it? It's not just not seeing that there's change.

It's not just seeing that, oh, I'm not this body. You realize there's nothing that I can have.

There's nothing that I can claim as mine. That's what frees you. That's what's liberating. Why? Because we believe that we can cling on to something and have something. That's the cause of suffering. So you have to understand four Noble Truths. Noble Truths of Buddhism. One, life is dukkha.

Dukkha means there's various words to explain it. You know, it is easily, uh, translated as, uh, suffering. Life is suffering. But it's suffering because it's unsatisfactory. It's imbalanced. And dukkha comes from the word where the wheels are not aligned in a cart, right? When you're driving a cart, when it's not even a car, when the wheels are not aligned, what happens? You just wobble all the way through, right? That's how unbalanced our life is, because we start all of this journey of life with an illusion that there's me.

There's me, this I-ness that we all feel. That's the ego, okay? And that creates what? Our wanting, needs, craving, clinging, attachments. And what happens? We can't get everything we want. Even those that we want, we have to lose it. So we're always experiencing loss or unsatisfactoriness, because we can't get everything we want, but we're always wanting, wanting, wanting.

That's the source of suffering. That's number two, Noble Truth number two is causation. He didn't just say that life is dukkha. That would have been pessimistic. Life is dukkha, but he gave diagnosis. Why? The reason our life is suffering, the reason we, we experience suffering, is because of our craving, cleanliness, our desire and attachments. Okay, where does that come from?

That comes from our ego. Yeah. This illusion of independent selfness that we feel, that I

am a separate individual from everybody else. That's the illusion. Yeah. But he didn't stop there. He said there is a liberation. It's called nirvana. That's the third noble truth. Third noble truth says that you can, you can become liberated from all suffering. Okay. And number four noble truth is, is the path to that liberation. And he gave eight noble paths as a system, okay, to practice in order to reach it.

And it starts with the right view, and ends with the right view. They're all dependent, eight noble paths. But a right view, meaning right understanding, starts with right understanding of this concept that I'm sharing with you. Right understanding, to have the right perspective. Yeah, the life is unsatisfactory. There's always something missing. No matter what you have, there's always going to be something missing. You know, you make certain amounts, you're going to try to protect it, you're going to try to make more of it.

You know, it's always striving, right? Life is never satisfactory. Nobody says, "Oh, I'm done. I'm done now." There's always something else I gotta have. Right? Even though we have just about everything we need, there's always that want. Whether it's relationship, whether it's materialistic things, you know, whether it's something for my kids, whatever it is, there's always that want. And there's attachment to our pets, to our kids, to our loved ones. All of those are always present. You know, wanting to be loved, recognized, acknowledged. Those are always there. Yeah. So we have to understand, because of that, we are suffering. We are stressed.

So by understanding that, we can set the right intention. Okay? So second of the Eighth Noble Paths is right intention. Intention to become free, liberated. For what? To be able to benefit others. So if you're not spiritually inclined for enlightenment, at least set your intention to make positive

impact on other people's lives. Okay? Always try to be considerate, caring, and kind. Because that will improve your quality of life by simply caring, right? Because when you care about other people, don't you feel good? Versus when you are hating or, you know, trying to avoid people that you don't like. So by caring and being compassionate, we're increasing our own quality of life. So first set that as intention. That's when everything follows, right? Speech, right action, right livelihood, and right mindfulness. Right mindfulness really means it's not just regular mindfulness that we we come to know in a secular sense. Right mindfulness is based on right intention.

So we're always watching ourself. Whether I'm speaking, acting, thinking, in accordance to my intention. If I veer off, recognize and come back. We do that in meditation, right? Recognize, come back, recognize, come back, come back. And then right samadhi.

So those are all really the essence of Buddha dharma. Recognizing the truth. Because we live based on our beliefs and concepts and assumptions and everything that, you know, created our own world that I live in is based on my own filtering system that I developed throughout my life, right? How do we penetrate that filtration system and to be able to see the reality, see the truth as is, that can be liberating, right? That's the practice. It starts by being present, being open, because when you're stressed, everybody's experienced stress, right? Anybody not experienced stress? I'm sure everybody does. If you look at carefully when you're experiencing stress, it has always to do with resistance. And we're reacting to people, to the circumstance, and we are resisting what already is.

And just this, but we're resisting it. But if you can become more open to what is,

and allow others to be. Okay? Allow others to be. I know every one of you have people that are annoying, right? That are triggering your negative energy. That's just, that's a fact of life actually. It's unavoidable because life is dukkha. We all have to experience that. So accept that. Allow it. Allow them to be.

Then at least you're peaceful, right? At least you can find that peace. Let them be. There's nobody you can truly change. So allow them to be. And allow the circumstance to be doesn't mean you become passive and you become submissive. It just means that you recognize it as is and then consciously, consciously make a choice to transform it, if you can. To transform the situation to better consequences. Understanding that everything that exists, exists based on those supporting conditions that manifests as that experience. That's what karma really is.

just means that everything is interdependent and is dependent on the supporting conditions. So focus on the supporting condition. If you want to manifest something, if you want to experience something, you know, look at that supporting condition and understand that if it's about me, it's about gaining what I want, then you're going to have more obstacles.

more obstacles in life than when you're focused on bringing happiness to others. That's why we have to be compassionate, altruistic, because our life experiences changes, because we're creating positive energy when we do that. That's why it's not about just being a nice person. It's about truly creating benefit for our life by becoming more giving, sharing, volunteering, all of that generates good karma, good karmic merit, good positive energy that you benefit immediately, you know, without having to wait for the boomerang effect.

So I'll just explain to the essence of Buddhism, that's all there is. Pretty simple, right? It's not that difficult. But the problem is, we've lived a certain direction, our habitual way, even though you understand it conceptually, to change that direction. Everyone has a direction right now. You all have this karmic direction. That's why you have this individual personality, individual perception, paradigms, experiences are all different. Because it's your karma that you have created from the past, that is now manifesting as your experience. Okay? So in order to change the direction, you gotta set that intention. That intention is what creates the path. That intention, our volitional decisions that we make, choices that we make, is what creates our speech, actions, and thoughts.

That's karma. Right? So that's why we start with intention. And we follow through with

what we say, and what we do, and how we think. And how we think is really powerful. So if you're always judging, always complaining, you're only going to experience more of it. Okay? But if you try to be understanding, try to be more open-hearted, try to be more compassionate, then that's what you're going to experience. Right? So it's whatever I come up with in my mind, how I see, how I perceive, is what's going to create my experience. That's why we say everything is mind-generated. Everything is mind. Because it depends on how you utilize this mind, your experience of life changes.

So instead of complaining about people that are causing suffering, just see if we can understand that they're suffering. They're causing suffering because they're suffering. That's why we send that love and kindness, even to those that are causing war, causing pain and suffering to other people.

Instead of judging them and hating them. Because when you do that, you're just creating the negative you finish. Without able to impact them. You know? So when we get angry, we say that

when we get angry, it's like taking a poison and wishing that other person to die. Kind of foolish, right? Yeah. Being angry never really helps. Yeah. It may motivate some people. Yes? I understand what you're saying. You are trying to give kindness and love, but there are certain people in your life that regularly are unkind. And in this world, we feel like we need to protect ourselves. How do you deal with that? What do you mean? What kind of protection do you need from them? Not just like, say, for work. Okay. There's unkind people at work. Right.

I think everybody experiences that. Yeah. Right? I get that question a lot. But you have to first take responsibility for it. It was my choice to be there. Right? So, first of all, we have to take responsibility for all of our experiences because it's my karma. That's the right way to approach it. first. So that whoever I have to deal with is because I put myself there. Through all the

billions of choices we made in the past, you know, with the butterfly effect, somehow made the choice for me to be right here with them. So we take responsibility for my experience. And also, by doing that, you can choose. You can choose. By knowing that it was my choice, my responsibility, that you know that I can also choose now. I can become a master of my experiences now. By choosing how I feel inside. About that person. Right? So whether I judge them or hate them or be annoyed, it should be my choice. But the problem is we've been giving up that choice so much that it became so natural to be triggered by other people. Right? But remember, it's my choice. My beingness, where I show up, should be my choice and is my choice. Instead, we just make those choices unconsciously.

We're so used to being bothered, you know, annoyed, triggered, that we give up that choice to other people. Why? Why we can become loving and kind? It doesn't mean you have to go reach out to them and, you know, try to do something for them. It's just how I feel inside. How I show up to

that environment. Should be my choice. That's where it takes work. That's where it takes work for myself. That's why we meditate to control our own, you know, to regulate our emotion. So we're not always just reacting to outside world, to other people, and to be able to choose. Okay, that's who she is, who he is.

But I'm going to remain kind and compassionate. Why? Because it's beneficial for me to be kind and loving. Right? And they can say all they want. You don't have to be affected by it. It is a choice. We just have to discipline our mind a little bit to stay present, understand the situation, understand the circumstances, and then do what is necessary with wisdom and compassion.

So it takes a lot of practice. So that's why we call ourselves what? Practitioners. We're all practitioners. We're practicing moment to moment to be awake, to be mindful, and to practice, to be compassionate, to be loving and kind. Why? Because it brings peace

and joy for us, for me. That's true happiness. If you're seeking happiness, seek peace of mind and joyful heart. Peace of mind comes when you let go of those negative emotions, negative reactiveness, things that I have to have. Clean you. Gotta let it go. Let it be.

Joyful heart comes from when we're altruistic and compassionate about others. So that's why we emphasize so much about the relationships that we have. Allow everybody to be who they are. Yeah. If they're becoming violent, yeah, you have to protect yourself. You know? That's where the line is drawn.

But emotionally, it should be my choice. No matter what they say, yell. You know, I've talked about examples. You know, there are many examples where you know it's a choice, you know? I personally experienced that when I was in Iraq with my boss. And they also had trained reserve marine units into mindfulness training for about eight weeks. And there's an incident that is recorded where this person who was trained, was a platoon

sergeant, just lost the vehicle in front of him, made the lead vehicle from IED. And he's in shock. But because he's been training himself, like any other training, to be mindful, he came right back to his breath. Okay, he said, "Okay, now what do I do?"

And instead of just being in shock and being in anger, frustrated, they lost his men right in front of him. He did a quick situation assessment, and then he reacted, responded accordingly. And by doing that, he was able to save the other folks that were right there, because they were still being attacked.

You know? So, that goes to show you, if you can control your reactiveness, which happens naturally because your amygdala sends a signal that you're a threat when you're stressed. But we have to overcome that by training our minds to be present, strengthening our prefrontal cortex, which science shows that actually the gray matter in your brain increases and actually thickens while it reduces the amygdala, gray matter. So you have a physiological change in your

brain when you meditate. Okay? So now we have science to back it up, not just philosophy or concepts. Okay? So utilize it. You can train your mind to be happy. So it's a choice. Yes? You know, what's interesting is sometimes whenever I'm being attacked, I still feel the warmness.

You know what I mean by the warmness? Like, you know, being attacked like verbally. Maybe there's, you know, a lot of people around me and whenever it's going on, I still feel the warmness, but there's a tendency to kind of do it. I think about it first before I respond with something, but I do still feel the...

The warmth from the other person? Or from yourself? I still. Yourself? Okay. Yeah, like being, you know, attacked like I'm thinking more before something comes out, But I still feel like I'm under attack. Yeah. But I'm a little bit more cognitive of what I decide to do, you know what I mean?

So you gotta take one more step. Yeah. But I still feel... Meaning, you're not being attacked. You're not being attacked. It feels like it. But that person is just being who they are. It's me perceiving that as an attack, right? That's my perception. You got to take one step further than that. Say, feel understanding, compassion for people that are being negative. Because they're suffering. Yeah.

They're all suffering. That's why they have no other choice to be that way. You got to allow them to be. Then what we do change. How we respond changes. When our perception changes. So enlightenment, really, it's just a paradigm shift. Yeah. Just a paradigm shift.

So in Zen, from all the Zen masters, they'll tell you it happens like this. Train, train, train. All of a sudden, it happens like that. Because the paradigm changes. It's not like big, you know, experience of, you know, floating and all of that.

It's just that everything looks different. And when you experience that, you'll see that you don't see anything that you can cling onto. Because everything is changing, everything comes and goes, just like this sound, you know. It happened, why? Because I've created the supporting condition. What's going to happen in a minute?

It's going to disappear. So if you're trying to hold on to the sound, because it sounds so beautiful, what would happen? You'd be unhappy, right? That's how it is, it's everything. That's how it is, it's everything. But we add values. We add value, nobleties, and we hold on to it.

As precious they may be, it's your value, it's your clinging, that makes them special and precious. It doesn't mean that we need to downgrade them into non-precious, you know, like our relationship with our family or anything like that. It's we have, we have made choices in the past to be with them. So take responsibility to be loving,

but love is not something you give and take. That's transactional. Love that we talk about is our beingness, how we show up. True love is just beingness. That is same across anybody. That's unconditional love, is when you can be loving. So I love you, now you gotta love me back, otherwise I can't love you back. You know, that's transactional. So just try to be loving, then you're happy, and others are happy, we're always happy.

It's like when you when you really care about somebody, it feels good, right? Yeah, when you're when you're with people you love, you really care about, let's say your kids, that you really like, think they're precious. It feels good to be around them, right? You know, unless you're arguing, of course.

But, what if you were loving to everybody? Wouldn't you be happy all the time? Theoretically, right? It's just that we pick and choose who we want to be happy with. Yes, it's not as easy as it sounds, but that's why we're practitioners. We practice so

that we can be happy, okay? And then once you come to realization of the empty nature, and also the selflessness through practice, you recognize that this is all there is. Enlightenment is not anything special, you think, miraculous happening. It's just that I am the now.

I am the infinite here, right? Where there's no longer I am anymore. There's no longer identity. Because there's no identity. There's no desire. There's no mind. There's nothing I have to have. There's nothing I have to do. Only based on the intention that I wanted to wake others, that I do what I do.

And that intention is what gives me breathing, eating, everything that I do is that intention. Otherwise, there's no other purpose. That is the purpose. That's the Bodhicitta. We call ourselves Bodhicitta Sangha. Bodhicitta. Bodhi means awakening. Chitta can be

translated as mind or heart. Bodhicitta. Why? We want to become awakened to be able to benefit others, to be able to awaken others. Why? To be liberated from all this suffering that repeats over and over and over again. Life is dukkha, not only because of the stress you experience right now, but it's repetitive.

Life after life after life. And Buddha saw that. When he got enlightened, he saw that everyone's just repeating his life over and over again. Not just as a human, but just different realms of life. Constantly. That's why that impermanence is suffering. That cycle of life itself is suffering.

Make sense? Yeah. So hopefully, as you practice, you deepen your practice, you'll see that my ultimate intention is complete liberation from the samsara of cycle, cyclical life and death. Anybody know where you're going to go after this? After you die? After this life? Anybody

know? That's why it's scary. That's why death is scary. But you don't know. But you can know. You can. So that's what this practice should deliver. If you know what this is, there's no longer fear about that. And there is no real death. It's just constant change. Just like your body has changed, your new body. You're actually going through rebirth moment to moment to moment. Reincarnation moment to moment to moment. You got new cells now. Right? Just now as I was talking, you got new cells. We don't see it that way. It's just that perception that's blocking to be able to see that reality. Then you know there's no death.

Yes ma'am? I just want to share an experience that I have. I think I kind of realized maybe what you're talking about is when I was by my mother's side. When you were what? By my mother's side. Okay. And when she took her last birth, I felt like her essence left her body. And she

went on to a new experience. But her consciousness, so limited. That's the change I feel. That's just me. Yeah. Everybody will have different experience, different perception of that experience. Yeah. So, but you have to see through that experience. To see what is real. Is it just what I'm feeling, what I'm seeing, versus what is it real? Because everybody, depending on their state of mind, will experience differently. That's why if you listen to the people who experience NDE, you know, near-death experience, they all have different, they're a little similarities. They all have different experiences because depending on what they had in their mind. Their mind will also create that experience, depending on who they are. So it's all mind. So why not study the mind? That's why a lot of times we call Buddhism "science of mind", to understand, to develop, to tame the mind, to discipline it.

It's all about the mind. And to realize what is truly the mind. Anybody know where your

mind is? Anybody find that answer? Where the mind and body connection is? When we were doing the walk, I asked, see if you can recognize where that mind and body connection is. Anybody see that? Okay, keep looking. So the only way to realize is if you look at yourself. You get all the answers, but it's not going to be helpful. Because it's all going to just remain as a concept in your mind, not a truth. There's a difference. Okay?

Any other questions? One thing is a little bit different from the Sunday. I was just all wondering, you know, what I'm missing on Saturday that I'll give... No, Saturday service, we do a bit of chanting. And we only do 30 minutes, and then going to dharma talk. Yeah, so topic, I try to keep the topic online, but I do it so... I do it kind of spontaneously, so it could change as well. So sometimes I go in deep during Wednesdays, sometimes I go deep on Saturdays, depending on the audience and, you know, what comes out naturally.

Some of the things I noticed, I think last week, it seems that if, I think you mentioned something about kind of thinking about what you were deciding to do the dharma talk on, so I just didn't want to like, you know, miss anything that was important, you know what I mean? Yeah, you're missing, you're missing importance. I know, but I mean, how can I be able to gain access to it? It's like a, maybe you're going to introduce something, you know, that's important. Oh, oh, we are recording, and we're going to start posting on our website. Okay. Yeah, so we're making a little bit of adjustments right now. Jake's working on that right now, so, all the recordings, we're kind of a little bit of editing all the, you know, background noise a little bit and be able to post it on there.

So, I'm going to stop it now, so.