Meditate reciting ''Buddho'',
''Buddho''2 until it
penetrates deep into the heart of your consciousness (citta). The word
''Buddho'' represents the awareness and wisdom of the Buddha. In
practice, you must depend on this word more than anything else. The awareness
it brings will lead you to understand the truth about your own mind. It's a
true refuge, which means that there is both mindfulness and insight present.
Wild animals can have
awareness of a sort. They have mindfulness as they stalk their prey and prepare
to attack. Even the predator needs firm mindfulness to keep hold of the
captured prey however defiantly it struggles to escape death. That is one kind
of mindfulness. For this reason you must be able to distinguish between
different kinds of mindfulness. The Buddha taught to meditate reciting ''Buddho''
as a way to apply the mind. When you consciously apply the mind to an object,
it wakes up. The awareness wakes it up. Once this knowing has arisen through
meditation, you can see the mind clearly. As long as the mind remains without
the awareness of ''Buddho'', even if there is ordinary worldly
mindfulness present, it is as if unawakened and without insight. It will not
lead you to what is truly beneficial.
Sati or mindfulness depends on the presence of ''Buddho'' - the
knowing. It must be a clear knowing, which leads to the mind becoming brighter
and more radiant. The illuminating effect that this clear knowing has on the
mind is similar to the brightening of a light in a darkened room. As long as
the room is pitch black, any objects placed inside remain difficult to distinguish
or else completely obscured from view because of the lack of light. But as you
begin intensifying the brightness of the light inside, it will penetrate
throughout the whole room, enabling you to see more clearly from moment to
moment, thus allowing you to know more and more the details of any object
inside there.
You could also compare
training the mind with teaching a child. It would be impossible to force a
child, who still hadn't learnt to speak, to accumulate knowledge at an
unnaturally fast rate that was beyond its capability. You couldn't get too
tough with it or try teaching it more language than it could take in at any one
time, because the child would simply be unable to hold its attention on what
you were saying for long enough.
Your mind is similar.
Sometimes it's appropriate to give yourself some praise and encouragement;
sometimes it's more appropriate to be critical. It's like the child: if you
scold it too often and are too intense in the way you deal with it, the child
won't progress in the right way, even though it might be determined to do well.
If you force it too much, the child will be adversely affected, because it
still lacks knowledge and experience and as a result will naturally lose track
of the right way to go. If you do that with your own mind, it isn't sammā patipadā or the way of practice that leads to enlightenment. Patipadā or
practice refers to the training and guidance of body, speech and mind. Here I
am specifically referring to the training of the mind.
The Buddha taught that
training the mind involves knowing how to teach yourself and go against the
grain of your desires. You have to use different skilful means to teach your
mind because it constantly gets caught into moods of depression and elation.
This is the nature of the unenlightened mind - it's just like a child. The
parents of a child who hasn't learnt to speak are in a position to teach it
because they know how to speak and their knowledge of the language is greater.
The parents are constantly in a position to see where their child is lacking in
its understanding, because they know more. Training the mind is like this. When
you have the awareness of ''Buddho'', the mind is wiser and has a more
refined level of knowing than normal. This awareness allows you to see the
conditions of the mind and to see the mind itself; you can see the state of
mind in the midst of all phenomena. This being so, you are naturally able to
employ skilful techniques for training the mind. Whether you are caught into
doubt or any other of the defilements, you see it as a mental phenomenon that
arises in the mind and must be investigated and dealt with in the mind.
That awareness which we
call ''Buddho'' is like the parents of the child. The parents are the
child's teachers in charge of its training, so it's quite natural that whenever
they allow it to wander freely, simultaneously they must keep one eye on it,
aware of what it's doing and where it's running or crawling to.
Sometimes you can be too
clever and have too many good ideas. In the case of teaching the child, you
might think so much about what is best for the child, that you could reach the
point where the more methods you think up for teaching it, the further away the
child moves from the goals you want it to achieve. The more you try and teach
it, the more distant it becomes, until it actually starts to go astray and
fails to develop in the proper way.
In training the mind, it is
crucial to overcome sceptical doubt. Doubt and uncertainty are powerful
obstacles that must be dealt with. Investigation of the three fetters of
personality view (sakkāya-ditthi), blind attachment to rules and
practices (sīlabbata-parāmāsa) and sceptical doubt (vicikicchā)
is the way out of attachment practised by the Noble Ones (ariya-puggala).
But at first you just understand these defilements from the books - you still
lack insight into how things truly are. Investigating personality view is the
way to go beyond the delusion that identifies the body as a self. This includes
attachment to your own body as a self or attaching to other people's bodies as
solid selves. Sakkāya-ditthi or personality view refers to this thing you call yourself. It
means attachment to the view that the body is a self. You must investigate this
view until you gain a new understanding and can see the truth that attachment
to the body is defilement and it obstructs the minds of all human beings from
gaining insight into the Dhamma.
For this reason, before
anything else the preceptor will instruct each new candidate for bhikkhu ordination
to investigate the five meditation objects: hair of the head (kesā),
hair of the body (lomā), nails (nakhā), teeth (dantā) and
skin (taco). It is through contemplation and investigation that you
develop insight into personality view. These objects form the most immediate
basis for the attachment that creates the delusion of personality view.
Contemplating them leads to the direct examination of personality view and
provides the means by which each generation of men and women who take up the
instructions of the preceptor upon entering the community can actually
transcend personality view. But in the beginning you remain deluded, without
insight and hence are unable to penetrate personality view and see the truth of
the way things are. You fail to see the truth because you still have a firm and
unyielding attachment. It's this attachment that sustains the delusion.
The Buddha taught to
transcend delusion. The way to transcend it is through clearly seeing the body
for what it is. With penetrating insight you must see that the true nature of
both your own body and other people's is essentially the same. There is no
fundamental difference between people's bodies. The body is just the body; it's
not a being, a self, yours or theirs. This clear insight into the true nature
of the body is called kāyānupassanā. A body
exists: you label it and give it a name. Then you attach and cling to it with
the view that it is your body or his or her body. You attach to the view that
the body is permanent and that it is something clean and pleasant. This
attachment goes deep into the mind. This is the way that the mind clings to the
body.
Personality view means that
you are still caught into doubt and uncertainty about the body. Your insight
hasn't fully penetrated the delusion that sees the body as a self. As long as
the delusion remains, you call the body a self or attā and
interpret your entire experience from the viewpoint that there is a solid,
enduring entity which you call the self. You are so completely attached to the conventional
way of viewing the body as a self, that there is no apparent way of seeing
beyond it. But clear understanding according to the truth of the way things are
means you see the body as just that much: the body is just the body. With
insight, you see the body as just that much and this wisdom counteracts the
delusion of the sense of self. This insight that sees the body as just that
much, leads to the destruction of attachment (upādāna) through the
gradual uprooting and letting go of delusion.
Practise contemplating the
body as being just that much, until it is quite natural to think to yourself:
''Oh, the body is merely the body. It's just that much.'' Once this way of
reflection is established, as soon as you say to yourself that it's just that much,
the mind lets go. There is letting go of attachment to the body. There is the
insight that sees the body as merely the body. By sustaining this sense of
detachment through continuous seeing of the body as merely the body, all doubt
and uncertainty is gradually uprooted. As you investigate the body, the more
clearly you see it as just the body rather than a person, a being, a me or a
them, the more powerful the effect on the mind, resulting in the simultaneous
removal of doubt and uncertainty. Blind attachment to rules and practices (sīlabbata-parāmāsa),
which manifests in the mind as blindly fumbling and feeling around through lack
of clarity as to the real purpose of practice, is abandoned simultaneously
because it arises in conjunction with personality view. You could say that the
three fetters of doubt, blind attachment to rites and practices and personality
view are inseparable and even similes for each other. Once you have seen this
relationship clearly, when one of the three fetters, such as doubt for
instance, arises and you are able to let it go through the cultivation of
insight, the other two fetters are automatically abandoned at the same time.
They are extinguished together. Simultaneously, you let go of personality view
and the blind attachment that is the cause of fumbling and fuzziness of
intention over different practices. You see them each as one part of your
overall attachment to the sense of self, which is to be abandoned. You must
repeatedly investigate the body and break it down into its component parts. As
you see each part as it truly is, the perception of the body being a solid
entity or self is gradually eroded away. You have to keep putting continuous
effort into this investigation of the truth and can't let up.
A further aspect of mental
development that leads to clearer and deeper insight is meditating on an object
to calm the mind down. The calm mind is the mind that is firm and stable in samādhi(concentration). This can be khanika samādhi (momentary
concentration), upacāra samādhi (neighbourhood
concentration) orappanā samādhi (absorption). The level of concentration is determined by the
refinement of consciousness from moment to moment as you train the mind to
maintain awareness on a meditation object.
In khanika samādhi (momentary concentration) the mind unifies for just a short space
of time. It calms down in samādhi, but
having gathered together momentarily, immediately withdraws from that peaceful
state. As concentration becomes more refined in the course of meditation, many
similar characteristics of the tranquil mind are experienced at each level, so
each one is described as a level of samādhi, whether
it is khanika, upacāra or appanā. At each level the mind is calm, but the depth of the samādhi varies
and the nature of the peaceful mental state experienced differs. On one level
the mind is still subject to movement and can wander, but moves around within
the confines of the concentrated state. It doesn't get caught into activity
that leads to agitation and distraction. Your awareness might follow a
wholesome mental object for a while, before returning to settle down at a point
of stillness where it remains for a period.
You could compare the
experience of khanika samādhi with a
physical activity like taking a walk somewhere: you might walk for a period
before stopping for a rest, and having rested start walking again until it's
time to stop for another rest. Even though you interrupt the journey
periodically to stop walking and take rests, each time remaining completely
still, it is only ever a temporary stillness of the body. After a short space
of time you have to start moving again to continue the journey. This is what
happens within the mind as it experiences such a level of concentration.
If you practise meditation
focusing on an object to calm the mind and reach a level of calm where the mind
is firm in samādhi, but
there is still some mental movement occurring, that is known as upacāra samādhi. In upacāra samādhi the mind can still move around. This movement takes place within
certain limits, the mind doesn't move beyond them. The boundaries within which
the mind can move are determined by the firmness and stability of
concentration. The experience is as if you alternate between a state of calm
and a certain amount of mental activity. The mind is calm some of the time and
active for the rest. Within that activity there is still a certain level of
calm and concentration that persists, but the mind is not completely still or
immovable. It is still thinking a little and wandering about. It's like you are
wandering around inside your own home. You wander around within the limits of
your concentration, without losing awareness and moving outdoors, away from the
meditation object. The movement of the mind stays within the bounds of wholesome
(kusala) mental states. It doesn't get caught into any mental
proliferation based on unwholesome (akusala) mental states. Any thinking
remains wholesome. Once the mind is calm, it necessarily experiences wholesome
mental states from moment to moment. During the time it is concentrated the
mind only experiences wholesome mental states and periodically settles down to
become completely still and one-pointed on its object.
So the mind still
experiences some movement, circling around its object. It can still wander. It
might wander around within the confines set by the level of concentration, but
no real harm arises from this movement because the mind is calm in samādhi. This is how the development of the mind proceeds in the course
of practice.
In appanā samādhi the mind calms down and is stilled to a level where it is at its
most subtle and skilful. Even if you experience sense impingement from the
outside, such as sounds and physical sensations, it remains external and is
unable to disturb the mind. You might hear a sound, but it won't distract your
concentration. There is the hearing of the sound, but the experience is as if
you don't hear anything. There is awareness of the impingement but it's as if
you are not aware. This is because you let go. The mind lets go automatically.
Concentration is so deep and firm that you let go of attachment to sense
impingement quite naturally. The mind can absorb into this state for long
periods. Having stayed inside for an appropriate amount of time, it then withdraws.
Sometimes, as you withdraw from such a deep level of concentration, a mental
image of some aspect of your own body can appear. It might be a mental image
displaying an aspect of the unattractive nature of your body that arises into
consciousness. As the mind withdraws from the refined state, the image of the
body appears to emerge and expand from within the mind. Any aspect of the body
could come up as a mental image and fill up the mind's eye at that point.
Images that come up in this
way are extremely clear and unmistakable. You have to have genuinely
experienced very deep tranquility for them to arise. You see them absolutely
clearly, even though your eyes are closed. If you open your eyes you can't see
them, but with eyes shut and the mind absorbed in samādhi, you can see such images as clearly as if viewing the object with
eyes wide open. You can even experience a whole train of consciousness where
from moment to moment the mind's awareness is fixed on images expressing the
unattractive nature of the body. The appearance of such images in a calm mind
can become the basis for insight into the impermanent nature of the body, as
well as into its unattractive, unclean and unpleasant nature, or into the
complete lack of any real self or essence within it.
When these kinds of special
knowledge arise they provide the basis for skilful investigation and the
development of insight. You bring this kind of insight right inside your heart.
As you do this more and more, it becomes the cause for insight knowledge to
arise by itself. Sometimes, when you turn your attention to reflecting on the
subject of asubha3, images
of different unattractive aspects of the body can manifest in the mind
automatically. These images are clearer than any you could try to summon up
with your imagination and lead to insight of a far more penetrating nature than
that gained through the ordinary kind of discursive thinking. This kind of
clear insight has such a striking impact that the activity of the mind is
brought to a stop followed by the experience of a deep sense of dispassion. The
reason it is so clear and piercing is that it originates from a completely
peaceful mind. Investigating from within a state of calm, leads you to clearer
and clearer insight, the mind becoming more peaceful as it is increasingly
absorbed in the contemplation. The clearer and more conclusive the insight, the
deeper inside the mind penetrates with its investigation, constantly supported
by the calm of samādhi. This is
what the practice of kammatthāna4involves.
Continuous investigation in this way helps you to repeatedly let go of and
ultimately destroy attachment to personality view. It brings an end to all
remaining doubt and uncertainty about this heap of flesh we call the body and
the letting go of blind attachment to rules and practices.
Even in the event of
serious illness, tropical fevers or different health problems that normally
have a strong physical impact and shake the body up, your samādhi and
insight remains firm and imperturbable. Your understanding and insight allows
you to make a clear distinction between mind and body - the mind is one
phenomenon, the body another. Once you see body and mind as completely and
indisputably separate from each other, it means that the practice of insight
has brought you to the point where your mind sees for certain the true nature
of the body.
Seeing the way the body
truly is, clearly and beyond doubt from within the calm of samādhi, leads to the mind experiencing a strong sense of weariness and
turning away (nibbidā). This turning away comes from the sense of
disenchantment and dispassion that arises as the natural result of seeing the
way things are. It's not a turning away that comes from ordinary worldly moods
such as fear, revulsion or other unwholesome qualities like envy or aversion.
It's not coming from the same root of attachment as those defiled mental
states. This is turning away that has a spiritual quality to it and has a
different effect on the mind than the normal moods of boredom and weariness
experienced by ordinary unenlightened human beings (puthujjana). Usually
when ordinary unenlightened human beings are weary and fed up, they get caught
into moods of aversion, rejection and seeking to avoid. The experience of
insight is not the same.
The sense of
world-weariness that grows with insight, however, leads to detachment, turning
away and aloofness that comes naturally from investigating and seeing the truth
of the way things are. It is free from attachment to a sense of self that
attempts to control and force things to go according to its desires. Rather,
you let go with an acceptance of the way things are. The clarity of insight is
so strong that you no longer experience any sense of a self that has to
struggle against the flow of its desires or endure through attachment. The
three fetters of personality view, doubt and blind attachment to rules and
practices that are normally present underlying the way you view the world can't
delude you or cause you to make any serious mistakes in practice. This is the
very beginning of the path, the first clear insight into ultimate truth, and
paves the way for further insight. You could describe it as penetrating the
Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths are things to be realized through
insight. Every monk and nun, who has ever realized them, has experienced such
insight into the truth of the way things are. You know suffering, know the
cause of suffering, know the cessation of suffering and know the path leading
to the cessation of suffering. Understanding of each Noble Truth emerges at the
same place within the mind. They come together and harmonize as the factors of
the Noble Eightfold Path, which the Buddha taught are to be realized within the
mind. As the path factors converge in the center of the mind, they cut through
any doubts and uncertainty you still have concerning the way of practice.
During the course of
practising, it is normal that you experience the different conditions of the
mind. You constantly experience desires to do this and that or to go different
places, as well as the different moods of mental pain, frustration or else
indulgence in pleasure seeking - all of which are the fruits of past kamma(actions). All this resultant kamma swells up inside the mind and puffs it out. However, it is the
product of past actions. Knowing that it is all stuff coming up from the past,
you don't allow yourself to make anything new or extra out of it. You observe
and reflect on the arising and cessation of conditions. That which has not yet
arisen is still unarisen. This word 'arise' refers to upādāna or the
mind's firm attachment and clinging. Over time your mind has been exposed to
and conditioned by craving and defilement and the mental conditions and
characteristics you experience reflect that. Having developed insight, your mind
no longer follows those old habit patterns that were fashioned by defilement. A
separation occurs between the mind and those defiled ways of thinking and
reacting. The mind separates from the defilements.
You can compare this with
the effect of putting oil and paint together in a bottle. Each liquid has a
very different density so it doesn't matter whether you keep them in the same
bottle or in separate ones, because the difference in their density prevents
the liquids from mixing together or permeating into each other. The oil doesn't
mix in with the paint and vice versa. They remain in separate parts of the
bottle. You can compare the bottle with the world and these two different
liquids, that have been put into the bottle and are forced to stay within its
confines, are similar to you living in the world with insight that separates
your mind from the defilements. You can say that you are living in the world
and following the conventions of the world, but without attaching to it. When
you have to go somewhere you say you are going, when you are coming you say you
are coming or whatever you are doing you use the conventions and language of
the world, but it's like the two liquids in the bottle - they are in the same
bottle but don't mix together. You live in the world, but at the same time you
remain separate from it. The Buddha knew the truth for himself. He was the lokavidū - the
knower of the world.
What are the sense bases (āyatana)?
They consist of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. These exist and
function just the same as before. The ears hear sound; the nose performs the
function of smelling different smells, whether fragrant or pungent; the tongue
has the function of tasting tastes whether sweet, sour, rich or salty; the body
senses heat and cold, softness and hardness; the mind receives mind objects
which arise in the same way as they always have. The sense bases function just
as they did before. You experience sensory impingement in just the same way as
you always have. It's not true that after the experience of insight your nose
no longer experiences any smells, or your tongue that formerly was able to
taste can no longer taste anything, or the body is unable to feel anything
anymore.
Your ability to experience
the world through the senses remains intact, just the same as before you
started practising insight, but the mind's reaction to sense impingement is to
see it as ''just that much''. The mind doesn't attach to fixed perceptions or
make anything out of the experience of sense objects. It lets go. The mind
knows that it is letting go. As you gain insight into the true nature of the
Dhamma, it naturally results in letting go. There is awareness followed by
abandoning of attachment. There is understanding and then letting go. With
insight you set things down. Insight knowledge doesn't lead to clinging or
attachment; it doesn't increase your suffering. That's not what happens. True
insight into the Dhamma brings letting go as the result. You know that it is
the cause of suffering, so you abandon attachment. Once you have insight the
mind lets go. It puts down what it was formerly holding on to.
Another way to describe
this is to say that you are no longer fumbling or groping around in your
practice. You are no longer blindly groping and attaching to forms, sounds,
smells, tastes, bodily sensations or mind objects. The experience of sense
objects through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind no longer
stimulates the same old habitual movements of mind where it is seeking to get
involved with such sense objects or adding on to the experience through further
proliferation. The mind doesn't create things around sense contact. Once
contact has occurred you automatically let go. The mind discards the
experience. This means that if you are attracted to something, you experience
the attraction in the mind but you don't attach or hold on fast to it. If you
have a reaction of aversion, there is simply the experience of aversion arising
in the mind and nothing more: there isn't any sense of self arising that
attaches and gives meaning and importance to the aversion. In other words the
mind knows how to let go; it knows how to set things aside. Why is it able to
let go and put things down? Because the presence of insight means you can see
the harmful results that come from attaching to all those mental states.
When you see forms the mind
remains undisturbed; when you hear sounds it remains undisturbed. The mind
doesn't take a position for or against any sense objects experienced. This is
the same for all sense contact, whether it is through the eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, body or mind. Whatever thoughts arise in the mind can't disturb you.
You are able to let go. You may perceive something as desirable, but you don't
attach to that perception or give it any special importance - it simply becomes
a condition of mind to be observed without attachment. This is what the Buddha
described as experiencing sense objects as ''just that much''. The sense bases
are still functioning and experiencing sense objects, but without the process
of attachment stimulating movements to and fro in the mind. There is no
conditioning of the mind occurring in the sense of a self moving from this
place to that place or from that place moving to this place. Sense contact
occurs between the six sense bases as normal, but the mind doesn't ''take sides'' by
getting caught into conditions of attraction or aversion. You understand how to
let go. There is awareness of sense contact followed by letting go. You let go
with awareness and sustain the awareness after you have let go. This is how the
process of insight works. Every angle and every aspect of the mind and its
experience naturally becomes part of the practice.
This is the way the mind is
affected as you train it. It becomes very obvious that the mind has changed and
is not the same as usual. It no longer behaves in the way you are accustomed
to. You are no longer creating a self out of your experience. For example, when
you experience the death of your mother, father or anyone else who is close to
you, if your mind remains firm in the practice of calm and insight and is able
to reflect skillfully on what has happened, you won't create suffering for
yourself out of the event. Rather than panicking or feeling shocked at the news
of that person's death, there is just a sense of sadness and dispassion coming
from wise reflection. You are aware of the experience and then let go. There is
the knowing and then you lay it aside. You let go without generating any
further suffering for yourself. This is because you know clearly what causes
suffering to arise. When you do encounter suffering you are aware of that
suffering. As soon as you start to experience suffering you automatically ask
yourself the question: where does it come from? Suffering has its cause and
that is the attachment and clinging still left in the mind. So you have to let
go of the attachment. All suffering comes from a cause. Having created the
cause, you abandon it. Abandon it with wisdom. You let go of it through
insight, which means wisdom. You can't let go through delusion. This is the way
it is.
The investigation and
development of insight into the Dhamma gives rise to this profound peace of
mind. Having gained such clear and penetrating insight means it is sustained at
all times whether you are sitting meditation with your eyes closed, or even if
you are doing something with your eyes open. Whatever situation you find
yourself in, be it in formal meditation or not, the clarity of insight remains.
When you have unwavering mindfulness of the mind within the mind, you don't
forget yourself. Whether standing, walking, sitting or lying down, the
awareness within makes it impossible to lose mindfulness. It's a state of
awareness that prevents you forgetting yourself. Mindfulness has become so
strong that it is self-sustaining to the point where it becomes natural for the
mind to be that way. These are the results of training and cultivating the mind
and it is here where you go beyond doubt. You have no doubts about the future;
you have no doubts about the past and accordingly have no need to doubt about
the present either. You still have awareness that there is such a thing as
past, present and future. You are aware of the existence of time. There is the
reality of the past, present and future, but you are no longer concerned or
worried about it.
Why are you no longer
concerned? All those things that took place in the past have already happened.
The past has already passed by. All that is arising in the present is the
result of causes that lay in the past. An obvious example of this is to say
that if you don't feel hungry now, it's because you have already eaten at some
time in the past. The lack of hunger in the present is the result of actions
performed in the past. If you know your experience in the present, you can know
the past. Eating a meal was the cause from the past that resulted in you
feeling at ease or energetic in the present and this provides the cause for you
to be active and work in the future. So the present is providing causes that
will bring results in the future. The past, present and future can thus be seen
as one and the same. The Buddha called it eko
dhammo - the unity
of the Dhamma. It isn't many different things; there is just this much. When
you see the present, you see the future. By understanding the present you
understand the past. Past, present and future make up a chain of continuous
cause and effect and hence are constantly flowing on from one to the other.
There are causes from the past that produce results in the present and these
are already producing causes for the future. This process of cause and result
applies to practice in the same way. You experience the fruits of having
trained the mind in samādhiand
insight and these necessarily make the mind wiser and more skilful.
The mind completely
transcends doubt. You are no longer uncertain or speculating about anything.
The lack of doubt means you no longer fumble around or have to feel your way
through the practice. As a result you live and act in accordance with nature.
You live in the world in the most natural way. That means living in the world
peacefully. You are able to find peace even in the midst of that which is
unpeaceful. It means you are fully able to live in the world. You are able to
live in the world without creating any problems. The Buddha lived in the world
and was able to find true peace of mind within the world. As practitioners of
the Dhamma, you must learn to do the same. Don't get lost in and attached to
perceptions about things being this way or that way. Don't attach or give undue
importance to any perceptions that are still deluded. Whenever the mind becomes
stirred up, investigate and contemplate the cause. When you aren't making any
suffering for yourself out of things, you are at ease. When there are no issues
causing mental agitation, you remain equanimous. That is, you continue to
practise normally with a mental equanimity maintained by the presence of
mindfulness and an all-round awareness. You keep a sense of self-control and
equilibrium. If any matter arises and prevails upon the mind, you immediately
take hold of it for thorough investigation and contemplation. If there is clear
insight at that moment, you penetrate the matter with wisdom and prevent it
creating any suffering in the mind. If there is not yet clear insight, you let
the matter go temporarily through the practice of samatha meditation
and don't allow the mind to attach. At some point in the future, your insight
will certainly be strong enough to penetrate it, because sooner or later you
will develop insight powerful enough to comprehend everything that still causes
attachment and suffering.
Ultimately, the mind has to
make a great effort to struggle with and overcome the reactions stimulated by
every kind of sense object and mental state that you experience. It must work
hard with every single object that contacts it. All the six internal sense
bases and their external objects converge on the mind. By focusing awareness on
the mind alone, you gain understanding and insight into the eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, body, mind and all their objects. The mind is there already, so the
important thing is to investigate right at the center of the mind. The further
you go investigating the mind itself, the clearer and more profound the insight
that emerges. This is something I emphasize when teaching, because
understanding this point is crucial to the practice. Normally, when you
experience sense contact and receive impingement from different objects, the
mind is just waiting to react with attraction or aversion. That is what happens
with the unenlightened mind. It's ready to get caught into good moods because
of one kind of stimulation or bad moods because of another kind.
Here you examine the mind
with firm and unwavering attention. As you experience different objects through
the senses, you don't let it feed mental proliferation. You don't get caught
into a lot of defiled thinking - you are already practising vipassanā and
depending on insight wisdom to investigate all sense objects. The mode of vipassanā meditation
is what develops wisdom. Training with the different objects of samatha meditation
- whether it is the recitation of a word such as Buddho, Dhammo, Sangho or the
practice of mindfulness with the breathing - results in the mind experiencing
the calm and firmness of samādhi. In samathameditation you focus awareness on a single object and let go of
all others temporarily.
Vipassanā meditation is similar because you use the reflection ''don't
believe it'' as you make contact with sense objects. Practising vipassanā, you don't let any sense
object delude you. You are aware of each object as soon as it converges in on
the mind, whether it is experienced with the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or
mind and you use this reflection ''don't believe it'' almost like a verbal
meditation object to be repeated over and over again. Every object immediately
becomes a source of insight. You use the mind that is firm in samādhi to
investigate each object's impermanent nature. At each moment of sense contact
you bring up the reflection: ''It's not certain'' or ''This is impermanent''.
If you are caught in delusion and believe in the object experienced you suffer,
because all these dhammas (phenomena) are nonself (anattā). If you attach to anything
that is nonself and misperceive it as self, it automatically becomes a cause
for pain and distress. This is because you attach to mistaken perceptions.
Repeatedly examine the
truth, over and over again until you understand clearly that all these sense
objects lack any true self. They do not belong to any real self. Why, then, do
you misunderstand and attach to them as being a self or belonging to a self?
This is where you must put forth effort to keep reflecting on the truth. They
aren't truly you. They don't belong to you. Why do you misunderstand them as
being a self? None of these sense objects can be considered as you in any
ultimate sense. So why do they delude you into seeing them as a self? In truth,
there's no way it could possibly be like that. All sense objects are
impermanent, so why do you see them as permanent? It's incredible how they
delude you. The body is inherently unattractive, so how can you possibly attach
to the view that it is something attractive? These ultimate truths - the unattractiveness
of the body and the impermanence and lack of self in all formations - become
obvious with investigation and finally you see that this thing we call the
world is actually a delusion created out of these wrong views.
As you use insight meditation
to investigate the three characteristics and penetrate the true nature of
phenomena, it's not necessary to do anything special. There's no need to go to
extremes. Don't make it difficult for yourself. Focus your awareness directly,
as if you are sitting down receiving guests who are entering into a reception
room. In your reception room there is only one chair, so the different guests
that come into the room to meet you are unable to sit down because you are
already sitting in the only chair available. If a visitor enters the room, you
know who they are straight away. Even if two, three or many visitors come into
the room together, you instantly know who they are because they have nowhere to
sit down. You occupy the only seat available, so every single visitor who comes
in is quite obvious to you and unable to stay for very long.
You can observe all the
visitors at your ease because they don't have anywhere to sit down. You fix
awareness on investigating the three characteristics of impermanence, suffering
and nonself and hold your attention on this contemplation not sending it
anywhere else. Insight into the transient, unsatisfactory and selfless nature
of all phenomena steadily grows clearer and more comprehensive. Your
understanding grows more profound. Such clarity of insight leads to a peace
that penetrates deeper into your heart than any you might experience from the
practice of tranquility (samatha) meditation. It is the clarity and
completeness of this insight into the way things are that has a purifying
effect on the mind. Wisdom arising as a result of deep and crystal clear
insight acts as the agent of purification.
Through repeated
examination and contemplation of the truth over time, your views change and
what you once mistakenly perceived as attractive gradually loses its appeal as
the truth of its unattractive nature becomes apparent. You investigate
phenomena to see if they are really permanent or of a transient nature. At
first you simply recite to yourself the teaching that all conditions are
impermanent, but after time you actually see the truth clearly from your
investigation. The truth is waiting to be found right at the point of
investigation. This is the seat where you wait to receive visitors. There is
nowhere else you could go to develop insight. You must remain seated on this
one spot - the only chair in the room. As visitors enter your reception room,
it is easy to observe their appearance and the way they behave, because they
are unable to sit down; inevitably you get to know all about them. In other
words you arrive at a clear and distinct understanding of the impermanent,
unsatisfactory and selfless nature of all these phenomena and this insight has
become so indisputable and firm in your mind, that it puts an end to any
remaining uncertainty about the true nature of things. You know for certain
that there is no other possible way of viewing experience. This is realization
of the Dhamma at the most profound level. Ultimately, your meditation involves
sustaining the knowing, followed by continuous letting go as you experience
sense objects through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. It involves
just this much and there is no need to make anything more out of it.
The important thing is to
repeatedly put effort into developing insight through investigation of the
three characteristics. Everything can become a cause for wisdom to arise, and
that is what completely destroys all forms of defilement and attachment. This
is the fruit of vipassanā meditation. But don't assume that everything you do is coming from
insight. Sometimes you still do things following your own desires. If you are
still practising following your desires then you will only put effort in on the
days when you are feeling energetic and inspired, and you won't do any
meditation on the days when you are feeling lazy. That's called practising
under the influence of the defilements. It means you don't have any real power
over your mind and just follow your desires.
When your mind is in line
with the Dhamma, there is no one who is diligent and there is no one who is
lazy. It's a matter of how the mind is conditioned. The practice of insight
keeps flowing automatically without laziness or diligence. It's a state that is
self-sustaining fuelled by its own energy. Once the mind has these
characteristics, it means you no longer have to be the doer in the practice.
You could say that it's as if you have finished all the work you have been
doing and the only thing left is for you to leave things to themselves and
watch over the mind. You don't have to be someone who is doing something
anymore. There is still mental activity occurring - you experience pleasant and
unpleasant sense contact according to your kammic accumulations - but you see
it as ''just that much'' and are letting go of attachment to the sense of self
the whole time.
At this point, you aren't
creating a self and so you aren't creating any suffering. All the sense objects
and moods you experience ultimately have exactly the same value in the mind.
Whatever mental or physical phenomena you examine appear the same as everything
else, bearing the same inherent qualities. All phenomena become one and the
same. Your wisdom has to develop that far for all uncertainty to come to an end
in the mind.
When you first start meditating,
it seems like all you know how to do is to doubt and speculate about things.
The mind is always wavering and vacillating. You spend the whole time caught in
agitated thinking and proliferating about things. You have doubts about every
last thing. Why? It stems from impatience. You want to know all the answers and
fast. You want to have insight quickly, without having to do anything. You want
to know the truth of the way things are, but that wanting is so strong in the
mind that it is more powerful than the insight you desire. For that reason the
practice has to develop in stages. You must go one step at a time. In the first
place you need to put forth persistent effort. You also need the continuous
support of your past good actions and development of the ten spiritual
perfections5 (pāramī).
Keep summoning up effort in
training the mind. Don't get caught into desiring quick results; that just
leads you to disappointment and frustration when the insights are slow to come.
Thinking like that won't help you. Is it correct to expect to suddenly experience
some kind of permanent state where you are experiencing no pleasure or pain at
all? It doesn't matter what the mind throws up at you. At that time when you do
get overwhelmed by pleasure and pain stimulated by contact between the mind and
different sense objects, you don't have any idea what level your practice has
reached. But within a short space of time such moods lose power over the mind.
Actually, such impingement can be of benefit, because it reminds you to examine
your own experience. You get to know what reactions all the sense objects,
thoughts and perceptions you experience bring up in the mind. You know, both in
the cases when they lead the mind towards agitation and suffering, and when
they hardly stir the mind at all. Some meditators just want to have insight
into the way the mind is affected by pleasant objects; they only want to
investigate the good moods. But that way they never gain true insight. They
don't become very smart. Really, you must also examine what happens when you
experience unpleasant sense impingement. You have to know what that does to the
mind. In the end, that's the way you have to train yourself.
It is also important to
understand that when it comes to the practice itself, you don't need to seek
out the past experiences and accumulated memories available from external
sources, because it's your own experience that counts. The only way to really
put an end to your doubts and speculation is through practising until you reach
the point where you see the results clearly for yourself. This is the most
important thing of all. Learning from different teachers is an essential
preliminary to practice. It is a valuable support as you move from hearing the
teachings to learning from your own experience. You have to contemplate the
teachings you receive in light of your own practice until you gain your own
understanding. If you already possess some spiritual qualities and virtue
accumulated from the past, practice is more straightforward. When other people
give you advice, generally it can save you time, by avoiding mistakes and
helping you go directly to the heart of practice. If you try practising alone
without any guidance from others, the path you follow will be a slower one with
more detours. If you try to discover the correct way to practise all by
yourself, you tend to waste time and end up going the long way round. That's
the truth of it. In the end, the practice of Dhamma itself is the surest way to
make all the doubting and wavering wither away and vanish. As you keep enduring
and training yourself to go against the grain of your defilements the doubts
will just shrivel up and die.
If you think about it, you
have already gained much from your efforts in the practice. You have made
progress, but it's still not enough to make you feel completely satisfied. If
you look carefully and reflect on your life, you can see just how much of the
world you have experienced through your mind from the time you were born,
through your youth until the present. In the past you weren't training yourself
in virtue, concentration and wisdom, and it's easy to see just how far the
defilements took you. When you look back on all that you have experienced
through the senses it becomes obvious that you have been experiencing the truth
about the way things are on countless occasions. As you contemplate the things
that have happened in your life, it helps lighten the mind as you see that the
defilements don't cover it over quite so thickly as before.
From time to time you need
to encourage yourself in this way. It takes away some of the heaviness.
However, it's not wise to only give yourself praise and encouragement. In
training the mind, you have to criticize yourself every now and then. Sometimes
you have to force yourself to do things you don't want to do, but you can't
push the mind to its limits all the time. As you train yourself in meditation
it is normal that the body, which is a conditioned phenomenon, is subject to
stress, pain and all sorts of different problems as conditions affect it. It's
just normal for the body to be like that. The more you train yourself in
sitting meditation, the more skilled at it you become and naturally you can sit
for longer periods. At first you might only be able to manage five minutes
before you have to get up. But as you practise more, the length of time you can
sit comfortably increases from ten to twenty minutes to half an hour, until in
the end you can sit for a whole hour without having to get up. Then other
people look at you and praise you for being able to sit so long, but at the
same time, you might feel within yourself, that you still can't sit for very
long at all. This is the way the desire for results can affect you in the
course of meditation.
Another important aspect of
the training is to sustain the practice of mindfulness evenly in all the four
postures of standing, walking, sitting and lying down. Be careful not to
misunderstand that you are only really practising when sitting in the formal
meditation posture. Don't see it as the only posture for cultivating
mindfulness. That's a mistake. It's quite possible that calm and insight might
not even arise during the course of formal sitting meditation. It's only
feasible to sit for so many hours and minutes in one day - but you have to
train yourself in mindfulness constantly as you change from posture to posture,
developing a continuous awareness. Whenever you lose awareness, reestablish it
as soon as possible to try and keep as much continuity as you can. This is the
way to make fast progress. Insight comes quickly. It's the way to become wise.
That means wise in understanding sense objects and how they affect the mind.
You use this wisdom to know your moods and to train the mind in letting go.
This is how you should understand the way to cultivate the mind. Even as you
lie down to sleep, you have to fix attention on the in- and out-breaths until
the moment you fall asleep and continue on as soon as you wake up. That way
there is only a short period when you are in deep sleep that you are not
practising awareness. You have to throw all your energy into training yourself.
Once you have developed
awareness, the longer you train yourself, the more wakefulness the mind
experiences until you reach a point where you don't seem to sleep at all. Only
the body sleeps, the mind remains aware. The mind remains awake and vigilant
even as the body sleeps. You remain with the knowing throughout. As soon as you
awake, mindfulness is right there from the first moment as the mind leaves the
sleeping state and immediately takes hold of a fresh object. You are attentive
and watchful. Sleeping is really a function of the body. It involves resting
the body. The body takes the rest it needs, but there is still the knowing
present, watching over the mind. Awareness is sustained both throughout the day
and night.
So, even though you lie
down and go to sleep, it's as if the mind doesn't sleep. But you don't feel
tired out and hungry for more sleep. You remain alert and attentive. It's for
this reason that you hardly dream at all when you are practising in earnest. If
you do dream, it is in the form of a supina
nimitta - an
unusually clear and vivid dream that holds some special significance.
Generally, however, you experience very few dreams. As you watch over the mind
it's as if there are no causes left for the mental proliferation that fuels
dreams. You remain in a state where you aren't caught in delusion. You sustain
mindfulness, with awareness present deep inside the mind. The mind is in a
state of wakefulness, being sharp and responsive. The presence of unbroken
mindfulness makes the mind's ability to investigate smooth and effortless and
keeps it abreast of whatever is arising from moment to moment.
You have to cultivate the
mind until it's totally fluent and skilled in keeping mindfulness and
investigating phenomena. Whenever the mind reaches a state of calm, train it in
examining your own body and those of other people until you have deep enough
insight to see the common characteristics. Pursue the investigation to the
point where you see all bodies as having the same essential nature and having
come from the same material elements. You must keep observing and
contemplating. Before you go to sleep at night, use awareness to sweep over the
entire body and repeat the contemplation when you first wake up in the morning.
This way you won't have to experience nightmares, talk in your sleep or get
caught up in a lot of dreaming. You sleep and wake up peacefully without
anything bothering you. You sustain the state of knowing both in your sleep and
as you wake up. When you wake up with mindfulness, the mind is bright, clear
and unbothered by sleepiness. As you awaken the mind is radiant, being free
from dullness and moods conditioned by the defilements.
Here I have been giving
details of the development of the mind in the course of practice. Normally, you
wouldn't think it possible that the mind could actually be peaceful during the
time you are asleep, when you first wake up or in other situations where you
would expect mindfulness to be weak. For instance, you might be sitting down
soaking wet having just walked through a heavy rainstorm, but because you have
cultivated samādhi and learnt to contemplate, the mind remains untouched by defiled
moods and is still able to experience peace and clarity of insight, just as I
have been describing.
The last teaching the
Buddha gave to the community of monks was an exhortation not to get caught in
heedlessness. He said that heedlessness is the way that leads to death. Please
understand this and take it to heart as fully and sincerely as you can. Train
yourself to think with wisdom. Use wisdom to guide your speech. Whatever you
do, use wisdom as your guide.
Footnotes
A talk
given to a group of lay meditators in Bangkok in April 1979
Buddho: a parikamma (preparatory)
meditation word for the recollection of the Buddha. Frequently used as an
initial object for developing concentration.
Asubha: refers
to the impurity, foulness or unattractiveness of the body, which can be taken up
as a meditation object for developing calm and insight.
Kammatthāna:
literally means the working-ground or basis for action. It is used to describe
the object or subject of meditation that leads one to gain skill in both calm
and insight. Often used to refer to the whole lifestyle of the practitioner who
is aiming at developing calm and insight.
Pāramī: the ten
spiritual perfections include: giving, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, effort,
patience, truthfulness, resolution, loving-kindness and equanimity.
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