The Future Lineage

In the age of information, the chief obstacle to liberation has become the mind itself. In the ages that follow, humanity will wander within worlds built from technological creations that supply sensation, with many of the functions of the mind by then outsourced to external technology.

From Lived Experience to Accumulated Information

In today's society, many people are simply waiting for Buddhas and great arahants to appear in the world. Buddhas and great arahants do appear in the world, attain parinirvana, and pass on.

A being centred on the mind lives according to the various worlds, methods, views, and 'programs' that form within the mind. Some years ago, what people carried was direct experience: they built reservoirs, constructed stupas, carved statues, and raised great stone pillars. Looking at a samadhi statue, one can appreciate the extent to which these people worked through their own experience, through their own practice. These people had matured through experience and practice, not through formal learning. The village medicine man was not a learned man, but a mature one. The village headman was a mature person. The chief monk of the village temple was a well-matured person — not learned, but wise. Today's people are not living grounded in maturity. Today, a being lives centred on a great mass of information gathered in the head, driven by the hope of continually acquiring new information. Beings today have become addicted to new information. A being lives founded upon information. What was called, from the day of a child's birth, 'giving them an education' was, in truth, loading an enormous quantity of information into their head.

From morning onward, people listen to Dhamma talks and give Dhamma talks. Within society, those who listen to Dhamma talks are filling their heads with information; those who give Dhamma talks are handing out information they themselves have gathered into their heads. Those who give this information must, in turn, keep finding still more information in order to keep giving it out. Looking at all of this together, what is actually taking place is simply an exchange of information — a process of communication.

Knowing About the Path Is Not the Same as Walking It

Look at yourself now. Whether you are a Buddhist or anything else, it makes no difference. You now know the Four Noble Truths. You know the Noble Eightfold Path. You know the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment. You know impermanence, suffering, and non-self. You know the teaching on iddhipada. You know the factors of enlightenment (bojjhanga). You know how the Venerable Kondanna became an arahant. You know how the Venerable Culapanthaka became an arahant. You know how Darucīriya became an arahant. You know how Patacara became an arahant. See what it is that our people do not know! Yet in the Buddha's own time, the arahants of that era understood the Dhamma-principle by which they themselves had become arahants — that alone is what they knew. They did not, for the most part, know how other, different people had become arahants. Such details are things that came to be gathered together and compiled only later, as information.

Even without your knowing it, by now Buddhas have already appeared in this world, sasanas have already arisen, path-and-fruit attainers have already appeared, and this present sasana too has already advanced a great distance across a great span of time. Our people simply cling to something inherited from the past, a tradition passed down to them, trapped within that body of information, pleading within it, living their lives within it — that is all that continues to be done. Now, this discourse on the Future Lineage is being taught. But even having taught it, it will not be understood. Because your mind is not ready — has not been shaped — to hold and comprehend this narrative of the future, to understand it.

This is because, today, you understand everything on the basis of information. By now, you know everything. You even know about death itself. You know the thirty-two parts of a corpse. You know everything. The question I put to you is this: right now, are you correct? Are you an arahant? Your own conscience, your own interior, your self-view, your personality-view, your defilements, the tendencies that rise up from within you — if you can see these clearly, you yourself can determine whether or not you have become an arahant. And, together with this, you can go to anyone regarded as an arahant and ask them two questions:

• Are you complete in sincerity?
• Are you complete in purity?

Sincerity and Purity, Not Accumulated Knowledge

Every arahant must be complete in sincerity, and complete in purity. Today, it is not the person who knows the greatest amount of information who is an arahant — and this is exactly where the mistake lies. A person who knows a vast amount of information is actually more skilled than a genuine arahant at declaring themselves an arahant — because they have the information to do it. They are skilled at proving arahantship through reasoning and argument. But a person who has genuinely become an arahant is, in truth, freed even from information itself. What is called 'information' here is really only information — nothing more.

There is nothing to be said about treating all things merely as conditioned phenomena (sankhara dhamma) in this abstract way. In truth, if one arahant were to meet another arahant, there would be nothing at all left to discuss. There is no one to talk to. There is no Dhamma left as a subject of discussion. There is nothing. This is the very nature of arahantship. So — does this world contain anyone genuinely spiritual, genuinely an arahant, who is a hundred percent sincere? A hundred percent pure? Ask this question. If they are not sincere, that is exactly the point at which they become stuck — because becoming sincere requires examining honestly whether one is truly sincere, and in doing so, one's own accumulated inner rubbish becomes visible to oneself. At that point, the word 'realization' cannot even be used any longer. If you honestly ask yourself whether you are correct, and you can plainly see within your own interior that you have not been fully purified, you become stuck right there. And yet there are those who describe, in detail, how they became arahants — gathering together a vast quantity of information from the Tipitaka, the commentaries, the sub-commentaries, and various examples — and who logically 'prove,' through argument, that their account is correct.

The Dream, and What Awakening Really Means

When we are asleep and dreaming, we can be seen running in fear within the dream. We laugh at joyful things within the dream. We experience all manner of things within the dream. But while we are inside the dream, we do not know that it is a dream. So, within the dream, we cry, we feel happy, we feel sad, we feel afraid, we feel joyful, we run — and all of this occurs as births taking place within the dream itself. Yet only upon waking from the dream do we come to know: this was a dream; nothing that happened within it had any real substance at all. Today, many people who believe they are walking a path of Dhamma, and who believe they have attained path-fruits and states of arahantship, are exactly like someone who has seen Nirvana within a dream — who has become an 'arahant' within a dream.

It is only upon waking from that dream called 'arahant' that one comes to see: I have been within this dream. One who has genuinely become an arahant no longer has any need of the label 'arahant.' It is only those who have not become arahants who still have something called 'arahant.' This is a subtle point that needs to be understood deeply. Stop running after this great mass of information. Begin, instead, to become sincere. Become pure. If anyone in this world becomes sincere, they attain the fullness of that path-fruit spoken of as being entirely purified. One must become a hundred percent sincere within one's own interior. Set purity aside for the moment. Become sincere. Within sincerity, that fullness of path and fruit can be attained very easily. That is precisely what suits the present age.

Sincerity Opens the Middle Way

When you become sincere, where do you fall? You fall, in truth, into the middle way (majjhima patipada). Now, if I tell you to come to the middle way, can you actually do it? You take even the 'middle way' merely as another piece of information. To arrive at the middle way, what must be done? One must be freed from both extremes. But have you even seen these two extremes? The extremes are seen either through indulgence in sense-pleasure, or through the practice of self-mortification — yet even this, too, is merely information. What I am asking is: can you actually feel the extreme present within your own mind? When the extreme within the mind is truly felt, no explanation, no interpretation arises for you. No word comes. You simply feel it. Is there a word adequate to what is felt? No. Words come afterward, in order to express what has already been felt. Has the Dhamma itself been felt by you? Has your own extreme actually been felt by you? Has it been felt that 'this is my extreme'? No. No one has actually felt it. Has the extreme of indulgence in sense-pleasure been seen? Felt? No — no such extreme has been felt. Has the other extreme been seen? No. Has the middle way, the middle itself, been felt? No. There is only a mass of words, a mass of conditioned constructions, a mass of assumptions, a mass of information. One cannot arrive at the middle way in this manner. The middle way cannot be made real, made sensately present, in this way. Yet without making the middle way sensately real, one can still go on talking about the middle way using every kind of word imaginable. So how, then, is the middle way to be made sensately real? How does one actually arrive at the middle way?

As long as you do not understand that what you are doing is merely exchanging a mass of words, the path of Dhamma will not come to fulfilment for you. What happens instead is that you are simply swept along, caught within this storm called information. So understand this clearly: today, people take hold of even two words like 'impermanence' and merely exchange them as information. Do you actually feel impermanence? If you genuinely felt the Dhamma-principle of impermanence — if it were sensately real to you — you would not hold on to even a single word. You would not hold on to a being, or a person. Today, even the Dhamma of impermanence is not sensately real to you. You are simply holding on to a mass of information. To come to the middle way, you must arrive, relative to the mental state you are in today, at sincerity. As you become freed from information and become sincere, sincerity itself touches you. You become sincere. It is precisely at the point of becoming sincere that your own middle way is born — that you arrive at the middle way. That is why you are told: become sincere.

Craving Mistaken for Desire: The Example of the New Car

Today, everyone struggles to eliminate craving. But what people actually have is craving distorted into confusion. Today, people do not even recognise genuine craving. Finding someone today who has truly and directly experienced craving is a rare thing indeed.

Yesterday, a gentleman came to see me in a brand-new Mercedes-Benz. I asked him, 'Sir, it has been a little while now since you got the car — are you happy?' He replied, 'Reverend Sir, even this doesn't feel quite right. If only I had gotten something even better, that would have been better.'

Consider something you might have right now. Suppose you order a pizza, it arrives, and you eat it. Once you have finished the first slice, what do you feel? 'If only there were something even better than this' — isn't that so? Why is your head so full of information? While eating that slice of pizza, all manner of things arise in your head. Why so much information? 'I could have ordered a different kind. I could have gotten that other type. Today's isn't as good as that other day's.' Now — is that eating the pizza slice out of genuine craving? Look again at the gentleman who came in the Benz. The very moment he sees the car, he thinks, 'this is really something, nothing better than this' — and yet, when asked, he says, 'not really, there are better cars than this available now.' His craving has not been fulfilled by that car at all.

When a man and a woman are involved with one another, within the man there exists a separate, imagined woman, built up entirely from information — from watching this or that video, this or that film — a fictional, lust-driven woman living inside him. In just the same way, a fictional, lust-driven man lives inside the woman. That is: for every man, for every woman, there exists a man or woman built up from information living inside them. Apart from engaging with the man or woman they have built up inside themselves, in truth, neither one even sees the actual person present with them in that very moment. Neither of them actually sees the real man or the real woman.

Consider buying new clothes. Our women search and search, and bring clothes home. Having brought the clothes home and worn them, do they think, 'I look beautiful'? No — 'what a pity, there were better ones than this.' So, in truth, you have not actually encountered craving at all. If you could genuinely experience craving fulfilled somewhere, tell me where. The very moment you obtain the thing, the very moment you think of it, it simply expires — you feel there was nothing really there at all.

Consider buying the very best kind of mobile phone available. After a little while, doesn't your mind drift once again to, 'wasn't there something even better than this'? We are, today, running along, chasing after this very kind of information and recollection...