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Those who practice the
Dhamma should train themselves to understand in the
following stages:
The training that is
easy to learn, gives immediate results, and is suitable
for every time, every place, for people of every age and
either sex, is to study in the school of this body -- a
fathom long, a cubit wide, and a span thick -- with its
perceiving mind in charge. This body has many things,
ranging from the crude to the subtle, that are well
worth knowing.
The steps of the
training:
1. To begin with, know
that the body is composed of various physical
properties, the major ones being the properties of
earth, water, fire, and wind; the minor ones being the
aspects that adhere to the major ones: things like
color, smell, shape, etc.
These properties are
unstable (inconstant), stressful, and unclean. If you
look into them deeply, you will see that there's no
substance to them at all. They are simply impersonal
conditions, with nothing worth calling "me" or "mine."
When you can clearly perceive the body in these terms,
you will be able to let go of any clinging or attachment
to it as an entity, your self, someone else, this or
that.
2. The second step is to
deal with mental phenomena (feelings, perceptions,
thought-formations, and consciousness). Focus on keeping
track of the truth that these are characterized by
arising, persisting, and then disbanding. In other
words, their nature is to arise and disband, arise and
disband, repeatedly. When you investigate to see this
truth, you will be able to let go of your attachments to
mental phenomena as entities, as your self, someone
else, this or that.
3. Training on the level
of practice doesn't simply mean studying, listening, or
reading. You have to practice so as to see clearly with
your own mind in the following steps:
a. Start out by brushing
aside all external concerns and turn to look inside at
your own mind until you can know in what ways it is
clear or murky, calm or unsettled. The way to do this is
to have mindfulness and self-awareness in charge as you
keep aware of the body and mind until you've trained the
mind to stay firmly in a state of normalcy, i.e.,
neutrality.
b. Once the mind can
stay in a state of normalcy, you will see mental
formations or preoccupations in their natural state of
arising and disbanding. The mind will be empty, neutral,
and still -- neither pleased nor displeased -- and will
see physical and mental phenomena as they arise and
disband naturally, of their own accord.
c. When the knowledge
that there is no self to any of these things becomes
thoroughly clear, you will meet with something that lies
further inside, beyond all suffering and stress, free
from the cycles of change -- deathless -- free from
birth as well as death, since all things that take birth
must by nature age, grow ill, and die.
d. When you see this
truth clearly, the mind will be empty, not holding onto
anything. It won't even assume itself to be a mind or
anything at all. In other words, it won't latch onto
itself as being anything of any sort. All that remains
is a pure condition of Dhamma.
e. Those who see this
pure condition of Dhamma in full clarity are bound to
grow disenchanted with the repeated sufferings of life.
When they know the truth of the world and the Dhamma
throughout, they will see the results clearly, right in
the present, that there exists that which lies beyond
all suffering. They will know this without having to
ask or take it on faith from anyone, for the Dhamma is
paccattam, i.e., something really to be known for
oneself. Those who have seen this truth within
themselves will attest to it always.
For those of you who
have never sat in meditation, here is how it's done:
Fold your legs, one on top of the other, but don't cut
off the nerves or the blood flow, or else the breath
energy in your legs will stagnate and cause you pain.
Sit straight and place your hands, one on top of the
other, on your lap. Hold your head up straight and keep
your back straight, too -- as if you had a yardstick
sticking down your spine. You have to work at keeping it
straight, you know. Don't spend the time slouching down
and then stretching up again, or else the mind won't be
able to settle down and be still...
Keep the body straight
and your mindfulness firm -- firmly with the breath.
However coarse or refined your breath may be, simply
breathe in naturally. You don't have to force the breath
or tense your body. Simply breathe in and out in a
relaxed way. Only then will the mind begin to settle
down. As soon as the breath grows normally refined and
the mind has begun to settle down, focus your attention
on the mind itself. If it slips off elsewhere, or any
thoughts come in to intrude, simply know right there at
the mind. Know the mind right at the mind with every
in-and-out breath for the entire hour...
When you focus on the
breath, using the breath as a leash to tie the mind in
place so that it doesn't go wandering off, you have to
use your endurance. That is, you have to endure pain.
For example, when you sit for a long time there's going
to be pain, because you've never sat for so long before.
So first make sure that you keep the mind normal and
neutral. When pain arises, don't focus on the pain. Let
go of it as much as you can. Let go of it and focus on
your mind... For those of you who've never done this
before, it may take a while. Whenever any pain or
anything arises, if the mind is affected by craving or
defilement, it'll struggle because it doesn't want the
pain. All it wants is pleasure.
This is where you have
to be patient and endure the pain, because pain is
something that has to occur. If there's pleasure,
don't get enthralled with it. If there's pain, don't
push it away. Start out by keeping the mind neutral as
your basic stance. Then whenever pleasure or pain
arises, don't get pleased or upset. Keep the mind
continuously neutral and figure out how to let go. If
there's a lot of pain, you first have to endure it and
then relax your attachments. Don't think of the pain as
being your pain. Let it be the pain of the body,
the pain of nature.
If the mind latches
tight onto anything, it really suffers. It struggles. So
here we patiently endure and let go. You have to
practice so that you're really good at handling pain. If
you can let go of physical pain, you'll be able to let
go of all sorts of other sufferings and pains as well...
Keep watching the pain, knowing the pain, letting it go.
Once you can let it go, you don't have to use a lot of
endurance. It takes a lot of endurance only at the
beginning. Once the pain arises, separate the mind from
it. Let it be the pain of the body. Don't let the mind
be pained, too...
This is something that
requires equanimity. If you can maintain equanimity in
the face of pleasure or pain, it can make the mind
peaceful -- peaceful even though the pain is still pain.
The mind keeps knowing, enduring the pain so as to let
it go.
After you've worked at
this a good while, you'll come to see how important the
ways of the mind are. The mind may be hard to train, but
if you keep training it -- if you have the time, you can
practice at home, at night or early in the morning,
keeping watch on your mind -- you'll gain the
understanding that comes from mindfulness and
discernment. Those who don't train the mind like this go
through life -- birth, aging, illness, and death -- not
knowing a thing about the mind at all.
When you know your own
mind, then when any really heavy illness comes along,
the fact that you know your mind will make the pain less
and less. But this is something you have to work at
doing correctly. It's not easy, yet once the mind is
well trained there's no match for it. It can do away
with pain and suffering, and doesn't get restless and
agitated. It grows still and cool -- refreshed and
blooming right there within itself. So try to experience
this still, quiet mind...
This is a really
important skill to develop, because it will make
craving, defilement, and attachment grow weaker and
weaker. All of us have defilements, you know. Greed,
anger, and delusion cloud all of our hearts. If we
haven't trained ourselves in meditation, our hearts are
constantly burning with suffering and stress. Even the
pleasure we feel over external things is pleasure only
in half-measures, because there's suffering and stress
in the delusion that thinks it's pleasure. As for the
pleasure that comes from the practice, it's a cool
pleasure that lets go of everything, really free from
any sense of "me" or "mine." I ask that you reach the
Dhamma that's the real meat inside this thing
undisturbed by defilement, undisturbed by pain or
anything else.
Even though there's pain
in the body, you have to figure out how to let it go.
The body's simply the four elements -- earth, water,
wind, and fire. It has to keep showing its inconstancy
and stressfulness, so keep your mindfulness neutral, at
equanimity. Let the mind be above its feelings -- above
pleasure, above pain, above everything...
All it really takes is
endurance -- endurance and relinquishment, letting
things go, seeing that they're not us, not ours. This is
a point you have to hammer at, over and over again. When
we say you have to endure, you really have to
endure. Don't be willing to surrender. Craving is going
to keep coming up and whispering -- telling you to
change things, to try for this or that kind of pleasure
-- but don't you listen to it. You have to listen to the
Buddha -- the Buddha who tells you to let go of craving.
Otherwise, craving will plaster and paint things over;
the mind will struggle and won't be able to settle down.
So you have to give it your all. Look at this hour as a
special hour -- special in that you're using special
endurance to keep watch on your own heart and mind.
The most important thing
in the daily life of a person who practices the Dhamma
is to keep to the precepts and to care for them more
than you care for your life -- to maintain them in a way
that the Noble Ones would praise. If you don't have this
sort of regard for the precepts, then the vices that run
counter to them will become your everyday habits...
Meditators who see that
the breaking of a precept is something trifling and
insignificant spoil their entire practice. If you can't
practice even these basic, beginning levels of the
Dhamma, it will ruin all the qualities you'll be trying
to develop in the later stages of the practice. This is
why you have to stick to the precepts as your basic
foundation and to keep a lookout for anything in your
behavior that falls short of them. Only then will you be
able to benefit from your practice for the sake of
eliminating your sufferings with greater and greater
precision.
If you simply act in
line with the cravings and desires swelling out of the
sense of self that has no fear of the fires of
defilement, you'll have to suffer both in this life and
in lives to come. If you don't have a sense of
conscience -- a sense of shame at the thought of doing
shoddy actions, and a fear of their consequences -- your
practice can only deteriorate day by day...
When people live without
any order to their lives -- without even the basic order
that comes with the precepts -- there's no way they can
attain purity. We have to examine ourselves: In what
ways at present are we breaking our precepts in thought,
word, or deed? If we simply let things pass and aren't
intent on examining ourselves to see the harm that comes
from breaking the precepts and following the
defilements, our practice can only sink lower and lower.
Instead of extinguishing defilements and suffering, it
will simply succumb to the power of craving. If this is
the case, what damage is done? How much freedom does the
mind lose? These are things we have to learn for
ourselves. When we do, our practice of self-inspection
in higher matters will get solid results and won't go
straying off into nonsense. For this reason, whenever
craving or defilement shows itself in any way in any of
our actions, we have to catch hold of it and examine
what's going on inside the mind.
Once we're aware with
real mindfulness and discernment, we'll see the poison
and power of the defilements. We'll feel disgust for
them and want to extinguish them as much as we can. But
if we use our defilements to examine things, they'll say
everything is fine. The same as when we're predisposed
to liking a certain person: Even if he acts badly, we
say he's good. If he acts wrongly, we say he's right.
This is the way the defilements are. They say that
everything we do is right and throw all the blame on
other people, other things. So we can't trust it -- this
sense of "self" in which craving and defilement lord it
over the heart. We can't trust it at all...
The violence of
defilement, or this sense of self, is like that of a
fire burning a forest or burning a house. It won't
listen to anyone, but simply keeps burning away, burning
away inside of you. And that's not all. It's always out
to set fire to other people, too.
The fires of suffering,
the fires of defilement consume all those who don't
contemplate themselves or who don't have any means of
practice for putting them out. People of this sort can't
withstand the power of the defilements, can't help but
follow along wherever their cravings lead them. The
moment they're provoked, they follow in line with these
things. This is why the sensations in the mind when
provoked by defilement are very important, for they can
lead you to do things with no sense of shame, no fear
for the consequences of doing evil at all -- which means
that you're sure to break your precepts.
Once you've followed the
defilements, they feel really satisfied -- like
arsonists who feel gleeful when they've set other
people's places on fire. As soon as you've called
somebody something vile or spread some malicious gossip,
the defilements really like it. Your sense of self
really likes it, because acting in line with defilement
like that gives it real satisfaction. As a consequence,
it keeps filling itself with the vices that run counter
to the precepts, falling into hell in this very lifetime
without realizing it. So take a good look at the
violence the defilements do to you, to see whether you
should keep socializing with them, to see whether you
should regard them as your friends or your enemies...
As soon as any wrong
views or ideas come out of the mind, we have to analyze
them and turn around so as to catch sight of the facts
within us. No matter what issues the defilements raise,
focusing on the faults of others, we have to turn around
and look within. When we realize our own faults and
can come to our senses: That's where our study of
the Dhamma, our practice of the Dhamma, shows its real
rewards.
The passage for
reflection on the four requisites (clothing, food,
shelter, and medicine) is a fine pattern for
contemplation, but we never actually get down to putting
it to use. We're taught to memorize it in the beginning
not simply to pass the time of day or so that we can
talk about it every now and then, but so that we can use
it to contemplate the requisites until we really know
them with our own mindfulness and discernment. If we
actually get down to contemplating in line with the
established pattern, our minds will become much less
influenced by unwise thoughts. But it's the rare person
who genuinely makes this a continuous practice... For
the most part we're not interested. We don't feel like
contemplating this sort of thing. We'd much rather
contemplate whether this or that food will taste good or
not, and if it doesn't taste good, how to fix it so that
it will. That's the sort of thing we like to
contemplate.
Try to see the
filthiness of food and of the physical properties in
general, to see their emptiness of any real entity or
self. There's nothing of any substance to the physical
properties of the body, which are all rotten and
decomposing. The body is like a restroom over a
cesspool. We can decorate it on the outside to make it
pretty and attractive, but on the inside it's full of
the most horrible, filthy things. Whenever we excrete
anything, we ourselves are repelled by it; yet even
though we're repelled by it, it's there inside us, in
our intestines -- decomposing, full of worms, awful
smelling. There's just the flimsiest membrane covering
it up, yet we fall for it and hold tight to it. We don't
see the constant decomposition of this body, in spite of
the filth and smells it sends out...
The reason we're taught
to memorize the passage for reflecting on the
requisites, and to use it to contemplate, is so that
we'll see the inconstancy of the body, to see that
there's no "self" to any of it or to any of the mental
phenomena we sense with every moment.
* * *
We contemplate mental
phenomena to see clearly that they're not-self, to see
this with every moment. The moments of the mind -- the
arising, persisting, and disbanding of mental sensations
-- are very subtle and fast. To see them, the mind has
to be quiet. If the mind is involved in distractions,
thoughts, and imaginings, we won't be able to penetrate
in to see its characteristics as it deals with its
objects, to see what the arising and disbanding within
it is like.
This is why we have to
practice concentration: to make the mind quiet, to
provide a foundation for our contemplation. For
instance, you can focus on the breath, or be aware of
the mind as it focuses on the breath. Actually, when you
focus on the breath, you're also aware of the mind. And
again, the mind is what knows the breath. So you focus
exclusively on the breath together with the mind. Don't
think of anything else, and the mind will settle down
and grow still. Once it attains stillness on this level,
you've got your chance to contemplate.
Making the mind still so
that you can contemplate it is something you have to
keep working at in the beginning. The same holds true
with training yourself to be mindful & alert in all your
activities. This is something you really have to work at
continuously in this stage, something you have to do all
the time. At the same time, you have to arrange the
external conditions of your life so that you won't have
any concerns to distract you...
Now, of course, the
practice is something you can do in any set of
circumstances -- for example, when you come home from
work you can sit and meditate for a while -- but when
you're trying seriously to make it continuous, to make
it habitual, it's much more difficult than that. "Making
it habitual" means being fully mindful and aware with
each in-and-out breath, wherever you go, whatever you
do, whether you're healthy, sick, or whatever, and
regardless of what happens inside or out. The mind
has to be in a state of all-encompassing awareness while
keeping track of the arising and disbanding of mental
phenomena at all times -- to the point where you can
stop the mind from forming thoughts under the power of
craving and defilement the way it used to before you
began the practice.
Try keeping your
awareness with the breath to see what the still mind is
like. It's very simple, all the rules have been laid
out, but when you actually try to do it, something
resists. It's hard. But when you let your mind think 108
or 1009 things, no matter what, it's all easy. It's not
hard at all. Try and see if you can engage your mind
with the breath in the same way it's been engaged with
the defilements. Try engaging it with the breath and
see what happens. See if you can disperse the
defilements with every in-and-out breath. Why is it that
the mind can stay engaged with the defilements all day
long and yet go for entire days without knowing how
heavy or subtle the breath is at all?
So try and be observant.
The bright, clear awareness that stems from staying
focused on the mind at all times: Sometimes a strong
sensory contact comes and can make it blur and fade away
with no trouble at all. But if you can keep hold of the
breath as a reference point, that state of mind can be
more stable and sure, more insured. It has two fences
around it. If there's only one fence, it can easily
break.
Normally the mind isn't
willing to stop and look, to stop and know itself, which
is why we have to keep training it continually so that
it will settle down from its restlessness and grow
still. Let your desires and thought-processes settle
down. Let the mind take its stance in a state of
normalcy, not liking or disliking anything. To reach a
basic level of emptiness and freedom, you first have to
take a stance. If you don't have a stance against which
to measure things, progress will be very difficult. If
your practice is hit-or-miss -- a bit of that, a little
of this -- you won't get any results. So the mind first
has to take a stance.
When you take a stance
that the mind can maintain in a state of normalcy, don't
go slipping off into the future. Have the mind know
itself in the stance of the present: "Right now it's in
a state of normalcy. No likes or dislikes have arisen
yet. It hasn't created any issues. It's not being
disturbed by a desire for this or that."
Then look on in to the
basic level of the mind to see if it's as normal and
empty as it should be. If you're really looking inside,
really aware inside, then that which is looking and
knowing is mindfulness and discernment in and of itself.
You don't need to search for anything anywhere else to
come and do your looking for you. As soon as you stop to
look, stop to know whether or not the mind is in a state
of normalcy, then if it's normal you'll know immediately
that it's normal. If it's not, you'll know immediately
that it's not.
Take care to keep this
awareness going. If you can keep knowing like this
continuously, the mind will be able to keep its stance
continuously as well. As soon as the thought occurs to
you to check things out, you'll immediately stop to
look, stop to know, without any need to go searching for
knowledge from anywhere else. You look, you know, right
there at the mind and can tell whether or not it's empty
and still. Once you see that it is, then you investigate
to see how it's empty, how it's still.
It's not the case that once it's empty, that's the end
of the matter; once it's still, that's the end of the
matter. That's not the case at all. You have to
keep watch of things, you have to investigate at all
times. Only then will you see the changing -- the
arising and disbanding -- occurring in that emptiness,
that stillness, that state of normalcy.
To lead your daily life
by keeping constant supervision over the mind is a way
of learning what life is for. It's a way of learning how
we can act so as to rid ourselves more and more of
suffering and stress -- because the suffering and stress
caused by defilement, attachment, and craving are sure
to take all sorts of forms. Only by being aware with
true mindfulness and discernment can we comprehend them
for what they are. Otherwise, we'll simply live
obliviously, going wherever events will lead us. This is
why mindfulness and discernment are tools for reading
yourself, for testing yourself within so that you won't
be careless or complacent, oblivious to the fact that
suffering is basically what life is all about.
This point is something
we really have to comprehend so that we can live without
being oblivious. The pains and discontent that fill our
bodies and minds all show us the truths of inconstancy,
stress, and not-selfness within us. If you contemplate
what's going on inside until you can get down to the
details, you'll see the truths that appear within and
without, all of which come down to inconstancy, stress,
and not-selfness. But the delusion basic to our nature
will see everything wrongly -- as constant, easeful, and
self -- and so make us live obliviously, even though
there is nothing to guarantee how long our lives will
last.
Our dreams and delusions
make us forget that we live in the midst of a mass of
pain and stress -- the stress of defilements, the pain
of birth. Birth, aging, illness, and death: All of these
are painful and stressful, in the midst of instability
and change. They're things we have no control over, for
they must circle around in line with the laws of
kamma and the defilements we've been amassing all
along. Life that floats along in the round of rebirth is
thus nothing but stress and pain.
If we can find a way to
develop our mindfulness and discernment, they'll be able
to cut the round of rebirth so that we won't have to
keep wandering on. They'll help us know that birth is
painful, aging is painful, illness is painful, death is
painful, and that these are all things that defilement,
attachment, and craving keep driving through the cycles
of change.
So as long as we have
the opportunity, we should study the truths appearing
throughout our body and mind, and we'll come to know
that the elimination of stress and pain, the elimination
of defilement, is a function of our practice of the
Dhamma. If we don't practice the Dhamma, we'll keep
floating along in the round of rebirth that is so
drearily repetitious -- repetitious in its birth, aging,
illness, and death, driven on by defilement, attachment,
and craving, causing us repeated stress, repeated pain.
Living beings for the most part don't know where these
stresses and pains come from or what they come from,
because they've never studied them, never contemplated
them, so they stay stupid and deluded, wandering on and
on without end...
If we can stop and be
still, the mind will have a chance to be free, to
contemplate its sufferings, and to let them go. This
will give it a measure of peace, because it will no
longer want anything out of the round of rebirth -- for
it sees that there's nothing lasting to it, that it's
simply stress over and over again. Whatever you grab
hold of is stress. This is why you need mindfulness and
discernment to know and see things for yourself, so that
you can supervise the mind and keep it calm, without
letting it fall victim to temptation.
This practice is
something of the highest importance. People who don't
study or practice the Dhamma have wasted their birth as
human beings, because they're born deluded and simply
stay deluded. But if we study the Dhamma, we'll become
wise to suffering and know the path of practice for
freeing ourselves from it...
Once we follow the right
path, the defilements won't be able to drag us around,
won't be able to burn us, because we're the ones
burning them away. We'll come to realize that the
more we can burn them away, the more strength of mind
we'll gain. If we let the defilements burn us, the mind
will be sapped of its strength, which is why this is
something you have to be very careful about. Keep trying
to burn away the defilements in your every activity, and
you'll be storing up strength for your mindfulness and
discernment so that they'll be brave in dealing with all
sorts of suffering and pain.
You must come to see the
world as nothing but stress. There's no real ease to it
at all. The awareness we gain from mindfulness and
discernment will make us disenchanted with life in the
world because it will see things for what they are in
every way, both within us and without.
The entire world is
nothing but an affair of delusion, an affair of
suffering. People who don't know the Dhamma, don't
practice the Dhamma -- no matter what their status or
position in life -- lead deluded, oblivious lives. When
they fall ill or are about to die, they're bound to
suffer enormously because they haven't taken the time to
understand the defilements that burn their hearts and
minds in everyday life. Yet if we make a constant
practice of studying and contemplating ourselves as our
everyday activity, it will help free us from all sorts
of suffering and distress. And when this is the case,
how can we not want to practice?
Only intelligent people,
though, will be able to stick with the practice. Foolish
people won't want to bother. They'd much rather follow
the defilements than burn them away. To practice the
Dhamma you need a certain basic level of intelligence --
enough to have seen at least something of the
stresses and sufferings that come from defilement. Only
then can your practice progress. And no matter how
difficult it gets, you'll have to keep practicing on to
the end.
This practice isn't
something you do from time to time, you know. You have
to keep at it continuously throughout life. Even if it
involves so much physical pain or mental anguish that
tears are bathing your cheeks, you have to keep with the
chaste life because you're playing for real. If you
don't follow the chaste life, you'll get mired in heaps
of suffering and flame. So you have to learn your
lessons from pain. Try to contemplate it until you can
understand it and let it go, and you'll gain one of
life's greatest rewards.
Don't think that you
were born to gain this or that level of comfort. You
were born to study pain and the causes of pain, and to
follow the practice that frees you from pain. This is
the most important thing there is. Everything else is
trivial and unimportant. What's important all lies with
the practice.
* * *
Don't think that the
defilements will go away easily. When they don't come in
blatant forms, they come in subtle ones -- and the
dangers of the subtle ones are hard to see. Your
contemplation will have to be subtle, too, if you want
to get rid of them. You'll come to realize that this
practice of the Dhamma, in which we contemplate to get
to the details inside us, is like sharpening our tools
so that, when stress and suffering arise, we can weaken
them and cut them away. If your mindfulness and
discernment are brave, the defilements will have to lose
out to them. But if you don't train your mindfulness and
discernment to be brave, the defilements will crush you
to pieces.
We were born to do
battle with the defilements and to strengthen our
mindfulness and discernment.
We'll find that the worth of our practice will grow
higher and higher because in our everyday life we've
done continuous battle with the stresses and pains
caused by defilement, craving, and temptation all along
-- so that the defilements will grow thin and our
mindfulness and discernment stronger. We'll sense within
ourselves that the mind isn't as troubled and restless
as it used to be. It's grown peaceful and calm. The
stresses and sufferings of defilement, attachment, and
craving have grown weaker. Even though we haven't yet
wiped them out completely, they've grown continually
weaker -- because we don't feed them. We don't give them
shelter. We do what we can to weaken them so that they
grow thinner and thinner each time.
And we have to be brave
in contemplating stress and pain, because when we don't
feel any great suffering we tend to get complacent. But
when the pains and sufferings in our body and mind grow
sharp and biting, we have to use our mindfulness and
discernment to be strong. Don't let your spirits be
weak. Only then will you be able to do away with
your sufferings and pains.
We have to learn our
lessons from pain so that ultimately the mind can gain
its freedom from it, instead of being weak and losing
out to it all of the time. We have to be brave in doing
battle with it to the ultimate extreme -- until we reach
the point where we can let it go. Pain is something
always present in this conglomerate of body and mind.
It's here for us to see with every moment. If we
contemplate it till we know all its details, we can then
make it our sport: seeing that the pain is the pain of
natural conditions and not our pain. This is
something we have to research so as to get to the
details: that it's not our pain, it's the pain of
the aggregates [form, feeling, perception,
thought-formations, and consciousness]. Knowing in this
way means that we can separate out the properties -- the
properties of matter and those of the mind -- to see how
they interact with one another, how they change. It's
something really fascinating... Watching pain is a way
of building up lots of mindfulness and discernment.
But if you focus on
pleasure and ease, you'll simply stay deluded like
people in general. They get carried away with the
pleasure that comes from watching or listening to the
things they like -- but then when pain comes to their
bodies and minds to the point where tears are bathing
their cheeks, think of how much they suffer! And then
they have to be parted from their loved ones, which
makes it even worse. But those of us who practice the
Dhamma don't need to be deluded like that, because we
know and see with every moment that only stress arises,
only stress persists, only stress passes away. Aside
from stress, nothing arises; aside from stress, nothing
passes away. This is there for us to perceive with every
moment. If we contemplate it, we'll see it.
So we can't let
ourselves be oblivious. This is what the truth is, and
we have to study it so as to know it -- especially in
our life of the practice. We have to contemplate stress
all the time to see its every manifestation. The
arahants live without being oblivious because they know
the truth at all times, and their hearts are clean and
pure. As for us with our defilements, we have to keep
trying, because if we continually supervise the mind
with mindfulness and discernment, we'll be able to keep
the defilements from making it dirty and obscured. Even
if it does become obscured in any way, we'll be able to
remove that obscurity and make the mind empty and free.
This is the practice
that weakens all the defilements, attachments, and
cravings within us. It's because of this practice of the
Dhamma that our lives will become free. So I ask you to
keep working at the practice without being complacent,
because if in whatever span of life is left to you, you
keep trying to the full extent of your abilities, you'll
gain the mindfulness and discernment to see the facts
within yourself, and be able to let go -- free from any
sense of self, free from any sense of self --
continuously.
The mind, if mindfulness
and awareness are watching over it, won't meet with any
suffering as the result of its actions. If suffering
does arise, we'll be immediately aware of it and
able to put it out. This is one point of the practice we
can work at constantly. And we can test ourselves by
seeing how refined and subtle our all-around awareness
is inside the mind. Whenever the mind slips away and
goes out to receive external sensory contact: Can it
maintain its basic stance of mindfulness or internal
awareness? The practice we need to work at in our
everyday life is to have constant mindfulness, constant
all-around present awareness like this. This is
something we work at in every posture: sitting,
standing, walking, and lying down. Make sure that your
mindfulness stays continuous.
Living in this world --
the mental and physical phenomena of these five
aggregates -- gives us plenty to contemplate. We must
try to watch them, to contemplate them, so that we can
understand them -- because the truths we must learn how
to read in this body and mind are here to be read with
every moment. We don't have to get wrapped up with any
other extraneous themes, because all the themes we need
are right here in the body and mind. As long as we can
keep the mind constantly aware all around, we can
contemplate them.
If you contemplate
mental and physical events to see how they arise and
disband right in the here and now, and don't get
involved with external things -- like sights making
contact with the eyes, or sounds with the ears -- then
there really aren't a lot of issues. The mind can be at
normalcy, at equilibrium -- calm and undisturbed by
defilement or the stresses that come from sensory
contact. It can look after itself and maintain its
balance. You'll come to sense that if you're aware right
at awareness in and of itself, without going out to get
involved in external things like the mental labels and
thoughts that will tend to arise, the mind will see
their constant arising and disbanding -- and won't be
embroiled in anything. This way it can be disengaged,
empty, and free. But if it goes out to label things as
good or evil, as "me" or "mine," or gets attached to
anything, it'll become unsettled and disturbed.
You have to know that if
the mind can be still, totally and presently aware, and
capable of contemplating with every activity, then
blatant forms of suffering and stress will dissolve
away. Even if they start to form, you can be alert to
them and disperse them immediately. Once you see this
actually happening -- even in only the beginning stages
-- it can disperse a lot of the confusion and turmoil in
your heart. In other words, don't let yourself dwell on
the past or latch onto thoughts of the future. As for
the events arising and passing away in the present, you
have to leave them alone. Whatever your duties, simply
do them as you have to -- and the mind won't get worked
up about anything. It will be able, to at least some
extent, to be empty and still.
This one thing is
something you have to be very careful about. You have to
see this for yourself: that if your mindfulness and
discernment are constantly in charge, the truths of the
arising and disbanding of mental and physical phenomena
are always there for you to see, always there for
you to know. If you look at the body, you'll have to see
it simply as physical properties. If you look at
feelings, you'll have to see them as changing and
inconstant: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain.
To see these things is to see the truth within yourself.
Don't let yourself get caught up with your external
duties. Simply keep watch in this way inside. If your
awareness is the sort that lets you read yourself
correctly, the mind will be able to stay at normalcy, at
equilibrium, at stillness, without any resistance.
If the mind can stay
with itself and not go out looking for things to
criticize or latch onto, it can maintain a natural form
of stillness. So this is something we have to try for in
our every activity. Keep your conversations to a
minimum, and there won't be a whole lot of issues. Keep
watch right at the mind. When you keep watch at the mind
and your mindfulness is continuous, your senses can stay
restrained.
Being mindful to keep
watch in this way is something you have to work at. Try
it and see: Can you keep this sort of awareness
continuous? What sort of things can still get the mind
engaged? What sorts of thoughts and labels of good and
bad, me and mine, does it think up? Then look to see if
these things arise and disband.
The sensations that
arise from external contact and internal contact all
have the same sorts of characteristics. You have to look
till you can see this. If you know how to look, you'll
see it -- and the mind will grow calm.
So the point we have to
practice in this latter stage doesn't have a whole lot
of issues. There's nothing you have to do, nothing you
have to label, nothing you have to think a whole lot
about. Simply look carefully and contemplate, and in
this very lifetime you'll have a chance to be calm and
at peace, to know yourself more profoundly within.
You'll come to see that the Dhamma is amazing right
here in your own heart. Don't go searching for the
Dhamma outside, for it lies within. Peace lies within,
but we have to contemplate so that we're aware all
around -- subtly, deep down. If you look just on the
surface, you won't understand anything. Even if the mind
is at normalcy on the ordinary, everyday level, you
won't understand much of anything at all.
You have to contemplate
so that you're aware all around in a skillful way. The
word "skillful" is something you can't explain with
words, but you can know for yourself when you see the
way in which awareness within the heart becomes special,
when you see what this special awareness is about. This
is something you can know for yourself.
And there's not really
much to it: simply arising, persisting, disbanding. Look
until this becomes plain -- really, really plain -- and
everything disappears. All suppositions, all
conventional formulations, all those aggregates and
properties get swept away, leaving nothing but awareness
pure and simple, not involved with anything at all --
and there's nothing you have to do to it. Simply stay
still and watch, be aware, letting go with every moment.
Simply watching this one
thing is enough to do away with all sorts of
defilements,
all sorts of suffering and stress. If you don't know how
to watch it, the mind is sure to get disturbed. It's
sure to label things and concoct thoughts. As soon as
there's contact at the senses, it'll go looking for
things to latch onto, liking and disliking the objects
it meets in the present and then getting involved with
the past and future, spinning a web to entangle itself.
If you truly look at
each moment in the present, there's really nothing at
all. You'll see with every mental moment that things
disband, disband, disband -- really nothing at all. The
important point is that you don't go forming issues out
of nothing. The physical elements perform their duties
in line with their elementary physical nature. The
mental elements keep sensing in line with their own
affairs. But our stupidity is what goes looking for
issues to cook up, to label, to think about. It goes
looking for things to latch onto and then gets the mind
into a turmoil. This point is all we really have to see
for ourselves. This is the problem we have to solve for
ourselves. If things are left to their nature, pure and
simple, there's no "us," no "them." This is a singular
truth that will arise for us to know and see. There's
nothing else we can know or see that can match it in any
way. Once you know and see this one thing, it
extinguishes all suffering and stress. The mind will be
empty and free, with no meanings, no attachments, for
anything at all.
This is why looking
inward is so special in so many ways. Whatever arises,
simply stop still to look at it. Don't get excited by
it. If you become excited when any special intuitions
arise when the mind is still, you'll get the mind worked
up into a turmoil. If you become afraid that this or
that will happen, that too will get you in a turmoil. So
you have to stop and look, stop and know. The first
thing is simply to look. The first thing is simply to
know. And don't latch onto what you know -- because
whatever it is, it's simply a phenomenon that arises and
disbands, arises and disbands, changing as part of its
nature.
So your awareness has to
take a firm stance right at the mind in and of itself.
In the beginning stages, you have to know that when
mindfulness is standing firm, the mind won't be affected
by the objects of sensory contact. Keep working at
maintaining this stance, holding firm to this stance. If
you gain a sense of this for yourself, really knowing
and seeing for yourself, your mindfulness will become
even more firm. If anything arises in any way at all,
you'll be able to let it go -- and all the many troubles
and turmoils of the mind will dissolve away.
If mindfulness slips and
the mind goes out giving meanings to anything, latching
onto anything, troubles will arise, so you have to keep
checking on this with every moment. There's nothing else
that's so worth checking on. You have to keep check on
the mind in and of itself, contemplating the mind in and
of itself. Or else you can contemplate the body in and
of itself, feelings in and of themselves, or the
phenomenon of arising and disbanding -- i.e., the Dhamma
-- in and of itself. All of these things are themes you
can keep track of entirely within yourself. You don't
have to keep track of a lot of themes, because having a
lot of themes is what will make you restless and
distracted. First you'll practice this theme, then
you'll practice that, then you'll make comparisons, all
of which will keep the mind from growing still.
If you can take your
stance at awareness, if you're skilled at looking, the
mind can be at peace. You'll know how things arise and
disband. First practice keeping awareness right within
yourself so that your mindfulness can be firm, without
being affected by the objects of sensory contact, so
that it won't label things as good or bad, pleasing or
displeasing. You have to keep checking to see that when
the mind can be at normalcy, centered and neutral as its
primary stance, then -- whatever it knows or sees -- it
will be able to contemplate and let go.
The sensations in the
mind that we explain at such length are still on the
level of labels. Only when there can be awareness
right at awareness will you really be able to know
that the mind that is aware of awareness in this way
doesn't send its knowing outside of this awareness.
There are no issues. Nothing can be concocted in the
mind when it knows in this way. In other words,
An inward-staying
unentangled knowing,
All outward-going knowing
cast aside.
The only thing you have
to work at maintaining is the state of mind at normalcy
-- knowing, seeing, and still in the present. If you
don't maintain it, if you don't keep looking after it,
then when sensory contact comes it will have an effect.
The mind will go out with labels of good and bad, liking
and disliking. So make sure you maintain the basic
awareness that's aware right at yourself. And don't let
there be any labeling. No matter what sort of sensory
contact comes, you have to make sure that this awareness
comes first.
If you train yourself
correctly in this way, everything will stop. You won't
go straying out through your senses of sight, hearing,
etc. The mind will stop and look, stop and be aware
right at awareness, so as to know the truth that all
things arise and disband. There's no real truth to
anything. Only our stupidity is what latches onto
things, giving them meanings and then suffering for it
-- suffering because of its ignorance, suffering because
of its unacquaintance with the five aggregates -- form,
feelings, perceptions, thought-formations, and
consciousness -- all of which are inconstant, stressful,
and not-self.
Use mindfulness to
gather your awareness together, and the mind will stop
getting unsettled, stop running after things. It will be
able to stop and be still. Then make it know in this
way, see in this way constantly -- at every
moment, with every activity. Work at watching and
knowing the mind in and of itself: That will be enough
to cut away all sorts of issues. You won't have to
concern yourself with them.
If the body is in pain,
simply keep watch of it. You can simply keep watch of
feelings in the body because the mind that's aware of
itself in this way can keep watch of anything within or
without. Or it can simply be aware of itself to the
point where it lets go of things outside, lets go of
sensory contact, and keeps constant watch on the mind in
and of itself. That's when you'll know that this is what
the mind is like when it's at peace: It doesn't give
meanings to anything. It's the emptiness of the mind
unattached, uninvolved, unconcerned with anything at
all.
These words --
unattached, uninvolved, and unconcerned -- are things
you have to consider carefully, because what they refer
to is subtle and deep. "Uninvolved" means uninvolved
with sensory contact, undisturbed by the body or
feelings. "Unconcerned" means not worried about past,
future, or present. You have to contemplate these things
until you know them skillfully. Even though they're
subtle, you have to contemplate them until you know them
thoroughly. And don't go concerning yourself with
external things, because they'll keep you unsettled,
keep you running, keep you distracted with labels and
thoughts of good and bad and all that sort of thing. You
have to put a stop to these things. If you don't, your
practice won't accomplish anything, because these things
keep playing up to you and deceiving you -- i.e., once
you see anything, it will fool you into seeing it as
right, wrong, good, bad, and so forth.
Eventually you have to
come down to the awareness that everything simply
arises, persists, and then disbands. Make sure you
stay focused on the disbanding. If you watch just
the arising, you may get carried off on a tangent, but
if you focus on the disbanding you'll see emptiness:
Everything is disbanding every instant. No matter what
you look at, no matter what you see, it's there for just
an instant and then disbands. Then it arises again. Then
it disbands. There's simply arising, knowing,
disbanding.
So let's watch what
happens of its own accord -- because the arising and
disbanding that occurs by way of the senses is something
that happens of its own accord. You can't prevent it.
You can't force it. If you look and know it without
attachment, there will be none of the harm that comes
from joy or sorrow. The mind will stay in relative
normalcy and neutrality. But if you're forgetful and
start latching on, labeling things in pairs in any way
at all -- good and bad, happy and sad, pleasing and
displeasing -- the mind will become unsettled: no longer
empty, no longer still. When this happens, you have to
probe on in to know why.
All the worthless issues
that arise in the mind have to be cut away. Then you'll
find that you have less and less to say, less and less
to talk about, less and less to think about. These
things grow less and less on their own. They stop on
their own. But if you get involved in a lot of issues,
the mind won't be able to stay still. So we have to
keep watching things that are completely worthless and
without substance, to see that they're not-self.
Keep watching them repeatedly, because your awareness,
coupled with the mindfulness and discernment that will
know the truth, has to see that, "This isn't my self.
There's no substance or worth to it at all. It simply
arises and disbands right here. It's here for just an
instant and then it disbands."
All we have to do is
stop and look, stop and know clearly in this way, and
we'll be able to do away with many, many kinds of
suffering and stress. The normal stress of the
aggregates will still occur -- we can't prevent it --
but we'll know that it's the stress of nature and won't
latch onto it as ours.
So we keep watch of
things that happen on their own. If we know how to
watch, we keep watching things that happen on their own.
Don't latch onto them as being you or yours. Keep this
awareness firmly established in itself, as much as you
can, and there won't be much else you'll have to
remember or think about.
When you keep looking,
keep knowing like this at all times, you'll come to see
that there are no big issues going on. There's just the
issue of arising, persisting, and disbanding. You don't
have to label anything as good or bad. If you simply
look in this way, it's no great weight on the heart. But
if you go dragging in issues of good and bad, self and
all that, then suffering starts in a big way. The
defilements start in a big way and weigh on the heart,
making it troubled and upset. So you have to stop and
look, stop and investigate really deep down inside. It's
like water covered with duckweed: Only when we take our
hand to part the duckweed and take a look will we see
that the water beneath it is crystal clear.
As you look into the
mind, you have to part it, you have to stop: stop
thinking, stop labeling things as good or bad, stop
everything. You can't go branding anything. Simply keep
looking, keep knowing. When the mind is quiet, you'll
see that there's nothing there. Everything is all still.
Everything has all stopped inside. But as soon as
there's labeling, even in the stillness, the stopping,
the quiet, it will set things in motion. And as soon as
things get set into motion, and you don't know how to
let go right from the start, issues will arise, waves
will arise. Once there are issues and waves, they strike
the mind and it goes splashing all out of control. This
splashing of the mind includes craving and defilement as
well, because avijja -- ignorance -- lies at its
root...
Our major obstacle is
this aggregate of perceptions, of labels. If we aren't
aware of the arising and disbanding of perceptions,
these labels will take hold. Perceptions are the chief
instigators that label things within and without, so we
have to be aware of their arising and disbanding. Once
we're aware in this way, perceptions will no longer
function as a cause of suffering. In other words, they
won't give rise to any further thought-formations. The
mind will be aware in itself and able to extinguish
these things in itself.
So we have to stop
things at the level of perception. If we don't,
thought-formations will fashion things into issues and
then cause consciousness to wobble and waver in all
sorts of ways. But these are things we can stop and look
at, things we can know with every mental moment... If we
aren't yet really acquainted with the arising and
disbanding in the mind, we won't be able to let go. We
can talk about letting go, but we can't do it because we
don't yet know. As soon as anything arises we grab hold
of it -- even when actually it's already disbanded, but
since we don't really see, we don't know...
So I ask that you
understand this basic principle. Don't go grasping after
this thing or that, or else you'll get yourself all
unsettled. The basic theme is within: Look on in, keep
knowing on in until you penetrate everything. The mind
will then be free from turmoil. Empty. Quiet. Aware. So
keep continuous watch of the mind in and of itself, and
you'll come to the point where you simply run out of
things to say. Everything will stop on its own, grow
still on its own, because the underlying condition
that has stopped and is still is already there,
simply that we aren't aware of it yet.
We have to catch sight
of the sensation of knowing when the mind gains
knowledge of anything and yet isn't aware of itself, to
see how it latches onto things: physical form, feeling,
perceptions, thought-formations, and consciousness. We
have to probe on in and look on our own. We can't use
the teachings we've memorized to catch sight of these
things. That won't get us anywhere at all. We may
remember, "The body is inconstant," but even though we
can say it, we can't see it.
We have to focus on in
to see exactly how the body is inconstant, to see
how it changes. And we have to focus on feelings --
pleasant, painful, and neutral -- to see how they
change. The same holds true with perceptions,
thought-formations, and so forth. We have to focus on
them, investigate them, contemplate them to see their
characteristics as they actually are. Even if you
can see these things for only a moment, it'll do you a
world of good. You'll be able to catch yourself: The
things you thought you knew, you didn't really know at
all... This is why the knowledge we gain in the practice
has to keep changing through many, many levels. It
doesn't stay on just one level.
So even when you're able
to know arising and disbanding with every moment right
in the present: If your contemplation isn't continuous,
it won't be very clear. You have to know how to
contemplate the bare sensation of arising and
disbanding, simply arising and disbanding, without any
labels of "good" or "bad." Just keep with the pure
sensation of arising and disbanding. When you do this,
other things will come to intrude -- but no matter how
they intrude, it's still a matter of arising and
disbanding, so you can keep your stance with arising and
disbanding in this way.
If you start labeling
things, it gets confusing. All you need to do is keep
looking at the right spot: the bare sensation of arising
and disbanding. Simply make sure that you really keep
watch of it. Whether there's awareness of sights,
sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations, just stay
with the sensation of arising and disbanding. Don't go
labeling the sight, sound, smell, taste, or tactile
sensation. If you can keep watch in this way, you're
with the pure present -- and there won't be any issues.
When you keep watch in
this way, you're keeping watch on inconstancy, on
change, as it actually occurs -- because even the
arising and disbanding changes. It's not the same thing
arising and disbanding all the time. First this sort of
sensation arises and disbands, then that sort arises and
disbands. If you keep watch on bare arising and
disbanding like this, you're sure to arrive at insight.
But if you keep watch with labels -- "That's the sound
of a cow," "That's the bark of a dog" -- you won't be
watching the bare sensation of sound, the bare sensation
of arising and disbanding. As soon as there's labeling,
thought-formations come along with it. Your senses of
touch, sight, hearing, and so forth will continue their
bare arising and disbanding, but you won't know it.
Instead, you'll label everything -- sights, sounds, etc.
-- and then there will be attachments, feelings of
pleasure and displeasure, and you won't know the truth.
The truth keeps going
along on its own. Sensations keep arising and then
disbanding. If we focus right here -- at the
consciousness of the bare sensation of sights, sounds,
smells, tastes, and tactile sensations -- we'll be able
to gain insight quickly...
If we know how to
observe things in this way, we'll be able to see easily
when the mind is provoked by passion or greed, and even
more easily when it's provoked by anger. As for
delusion, that's something more subtle... something you
have to take a great interest in and investigate
carefully. You'll come to see all sorts of hidden things
-- how the mind is covered with many, many layers of
film. It's really fascinating. But then that's what
insight meditation is for -- to open your eyes so that
you can know and see, so that you can destroy your
delusion and ignorance.
You have to find
approaches for contemplating and probing at all times so
as to catch sight of the flickerings of awareness, to
see in what ways it streams out to know things. Be
careful to catch sight of it both when its knowing is
right and when it's wrong. Don't mix things up, taking
wrong knowledge for right, or right knowledge for wrong.
This is something extremely important for the practice,
this question of right and wrong knowing, for these
things can play tricks on you.
When you gain any new
insights, don't go getting excited. You can't let
yourself get excited by them at all, because it doesn't
take long for your insight to change -- to change right
now, before your very eyes. It's not going to change at
some other time or place. It's changing right now. You
have to know how to observe, how to acquaint yourself
with the deceits of knowledge. Even when it's correct
knowledge, you can't latch onto it.
Even though we may have
standards for judging what sort of knowledge is correct
in the course of our practice, don't go latching onto
correct knowledge -- because correct knowledge is
inconstant. It changes. It can turn into false
knowledge, or into knowledge that is even more correct.
You have to contemplate things very carefully -- very,
very carefully -- so that you won't fall for your
knowledge, thinking, "I've gained right insight; I know
better than other people," so that you won't start
assuming yourself to be special. The moment you assume
yourself, your knowledge immediately turns wrong. Even
if you don't let things show outwardly, the mere mental
event in which the mind labels itself is a form of wrong
knowing that obscures the mind from itself in an
insidious way.
This is why meditators
who tend not to contemplate things, who don't catch
sight of the deceits of every form of knowledge -- right
and wrong, good and bad -- tend to get bogged down in
their knowledge. The knowledge that deceives them into
thinking, "What I know is right," gives rise to strong
pride and conceit within them, without their even
realizing it.
This is because the
defilements are always getting into the act without our
realizing it. They're insidious, and in their insidious
way they keep getting into the act as a matter of
course, for the defilements and mental effluents are
still there in our character. Our practice is basically
a probing deep inside, from the outer levels of the mind
to the inner ones. This is an approach that requires a
great deal of subtlety and precision... The mind has
to use its own mindfulness and discernment to dig
everything out of itself, leaving just the mind in and
of itself, the body in and of itself, and then keep
watch of them.
* * *
The basic challenge in
the practice is this one point and nothing else: this
problem of how to look inward so that you see clear
through. If the mind hasn't been trained to look
inward, it tends to look outward, simply waiting to
receive its objects from outside -- and all it gets is
the confusion of its sensations going in and out, in and
out. And even though this confusion is one aspect of
change and inconstancy, we don't see it that way.
Instead, we see it as issues, good and bad, pertaining
to the self. When this is the case, we're back right
where we started, not knowing what's what. This is why
the mind's sensations, when it isn't acquainted with
itself, are so secretive and hard to perceive. If you
want to find out about them by reading a lot of books,
you end up piling more defilements onto the mind, making
it even more thickly covered than before.
So when you turn to look
inward, you shouldn't use concepts and labels to do your
looking for you. If you use concepts and labels to do
your looking, there will be nothing but concepts
arising, changing, and disbanding. Everything will get
all concocted into thoughts -- and then how will you be
able to watch in utter silence? The more you take what
you've learned from books to look inside yourself, the
less you'll see.
So whatever you've
learned, when you come to the practice you have to put
all the labels and concepts you've gained from your
learning to one side. You have to make yourself an
innocent beginner once more. Only then will you be able
to penetrate in to read the truths within you. If you
carry all the paraphernalia of the concepts and
standards you've gained from your learning to gauge
things inside you, you can search to your dying day and
yet won't meet with any real truths at all. This is why
you have to hold to only one theme in your practice. If
the mind has lots of themes to concern itself with, it's
still just wandering around -- wandering around to know
this and that, going out of bounds without realizing it
and not really wanting to know itself. This is why those
with a lot of learning like to teach others, to show off
their level of understanding. And this is precisely how
the desire to stand out keeps the mind obscured.
Of all the various kinds
of deception, there's none as bad as deceiving
yourself. When you haven't yet really seen the
truth, what business do you have making assumptions
about yourself, that you've attained this or that sort
of knowledge, or that you know enough to teach others
correctly? The Buddha is quite critical of teachers of
this sort. He calls them "people in vain." Even if you
can teach large numbers of people to become arahants,
while you yourself haven't tasted the flavor of the
Dhamma, the Buddha says that you're a person in vain. So
you have to keep examining yourself. If you haven't yet
really trained yourself in the things you teach to
others, how will you be able to extinguish your own
suffering?
Think about this for a
moment. Extinguishing suffering, gaining release from
suffering: Aren't these subtle matters? Aren't they
completely personal within us? If you question yourself
in this way, you'll be on the right track. But even then
you have to be careful. If you start taking sides with
yourself, the mind will cover itself up with wrong
insights and wrong opinions. If you don't observe really
carefully, you can get carried off on a tangent --
because the awareness with which the mind reads itself
and actually sees through itself is something really
extraordinary, really worth developing -- and it really
eliminates suffering and defilement. This is the real,
honest truth, not a lot of propaganda or lies. It's
something you really have to practice, and then you'll
really have to see clearly in this way. When this is the
case, how can you not want to practice?
If you examine yourself
correctly in this way, you'll be able to know what's
real. But you have to be careful to examine yourself
correctly. If you start latching onto any sense of self,
thinking that you're better than other people, then
you've failed the examination. No matter how correct
your knowledge, you have to keep humble and respectful
above all else. You can't let there be any pride or
conceit at all, or it will destroy everything.
This is why the
awareness that eliminates the sense of self depends more
than anything else on your powers of observation -- to
check and see if there's still anything in your
knowledge or opinions that comes from the force of pride
in any sense of self... You have to use the full power
of your mindfulness and discernment to cut these things
away. It's nothing you can play around at. If you gain a
few insights or let go of things a bit, don't go
thinking you're anything special. The defilements don't
hold a truce with anyone. They keep coming right out as
they like. So you have to be circumspect and examine
things on all sides. Only then will you be able to
benefit in ways that make your defilements and
sufferings lighter and lighter.
When we probe in to find
the instigator -- the mind, or this property of
consciousness -- that's when we're on the right track,
and our probing will keep getting results, will keep
weakening the germs of craving and wiping them out. In
whatever way craving streams out, for "being" or
"having" in any way at all, we'll be able to catch sight
of it every time. To catch hold and examine this "being"
and "having" in this way, though, requires a lot of
subtlety. If you aren't really mindful and discerning,
you won't be able to catch sight of these things at all,
because the mind is continually wanting to be and to
have. The germs of defilement lie hidden deep in the
seed of the mind, in this property of consciousness.
Simply to be aware of them skillfully is no mean feat --
so we shouldn't even think of trying to wipe them
out with our mere opinions. We have to keep
contemplating, probing on in, until things come together
just right, in a single moment, and then it's like
reaching the basic level of knowing that exists on its
own, with no willing or intention at all.
This is something that
requires careful observation: the difference between
willed and unwilled knowing. Sometimes there's the
intention to look and be aware within, but there come
times when there's no intention to look within, and yet
knowledge arises on its own. If you don't yet know, look
at the intention to look inward: What is it like? What
is it looking for? What does it see? This is a basic
approach you have to hold to. This is a level you have
to work at, and one in which you have to make use of
intention -- the intention to look inward in this way...
But once you reach the basic level of knowing, then as
soon as you happen to focus down and look within, the
knowledge will occur on its own.
One night I was sitting
in meditation outside in the open air -- my back
straight as an arrow -- firmly determined to make the
mind quiet, but even after a long time it wouldn't
settle down. So I thought, "I've been working at this
for many days now, and yet my mind won't settle down at
all. It's time to stop being so determined and to simply
be aware of the mind." I started to take my hands and
feet out of the meditation posture, but at the moment I
had unfolded one leg but had yet to unfold the other, I
could see that my mind was like a pendulum swinging more
and more slowly, more and more slowly -- until it
stopped.
Then there arose an
awareness that was sustained by itself. Slowly I put my
legs and hands back into position. At the same time, the
mind was in a state of awareness absolutely and solidly
still, seeing clearly into the elementary phenomena of
existence as they arose and disbanded, changing in line
with their nature -- and also seeing a separate
condition inside, with no arising, disbanding, or
changing, a condition beyond birth and death: something
very difficult to put clearly into words, because it was
a realization of the elementary phenomena of nature,
completely internal and individual.
After a while I slowly
got up and lay down to rest. This state of mind remained
there as a stillness that sustained itself deep down
inside. Eventually the mind came out of this state and
gradually returned to normal.
From this I was able to
observe how practice consisting of nothing but fierce
desire simply upsets the mind and keeps it from being
still. But when one's awareness of the mind is just
right, an inner awareness will arise naturally of its
own accord. Because of this clear inner awareness, I was
able to continue knowing the facts of what's true and
false, right and wrong, from that point on, and it
enabled me to know that the moment when the mind let go
of everything was a clear awareness of the elementary
phenomena of nature, because it was an awareness that
knew within and saw within of its own accord -- not
something you can know or see by wanting.
For this reason the
Buddha's teaching, "Sabbe dhamma anatta -- All
phenomena are not-self," tells us not to latch onto
any of the phenomena of nature, whether conditioned
or unconditioned. From that point on I was able to
understand things and let go of attachments step by
step.
It's important to
realize how to focus on events in order to get special
benefits from your practice. You have to focus so as to
observe and contemplate, not simply to make the mind
still. Focus on how things arise, how they disband. Make
your focus subtle and deep.
When you're aware of the
characteristics of your sensations, then -- if it's a
physical sensation -- contemplate that physical
sensation. There will have to be a feeling of stress.
Once there's a feeling of stress, how will you be aware
of it simply as a feeling so that it won't lead to
anything further? Once you can be aware of it simply as
a feeling, it stops right there without producing any
taste in terms of a desire for anything. The mind will
disengage right there -- right there at the feeling. If
you don't focus on it in this way, craving will arise on
top of the feeling -- craving to attain ease and be rid
of the stress and pain. If you don't focus on the
feeling in the proper way right from the start, craving
will arise before you're aware of it, and if you then
try to let go of it, it'll be very tiring...
The way in which
preoccupations take shape, the sensations of the mind as
it's aware of things coming with every moment, the way
these things change and disband: These are all things
you have to focus on to see clearly. This is why we make
the mind disengaged. We don't disengage it so that it
doesn't know or amount to anything. That's not the kind
of disengagement we want. The more the mind is truly
disengaged, the more it sees clearly into the
characteristics of the arising and disbanding within
itself. All I ask is that you observe things carefully,
that your awareness be all-around at all times. Work at
this as much as you can. If you can keep this sort of
awareness going, you'll find that the mind or
consciousness under the supervision of mindfulness and
discernment in this way is different from -- is opposite
from -- unsupervised consciousness. It will be the
opposite sort of thing continually.
If you keep the mind
well supervised so that it's sensitive in the proper
way, it will yield enormous benefits, not just small
ones. If you don't make it properly sensitive and aware,
what can you expect to gain from it?
When we say that we gain
from the practice, we're not talking about anything
else: We're talking about gaining disengagement.
Freedom. Emptiness. Before, the mind was embroiled.
Defilement and craving attacked and robbed it, leaving
it completely entangled. Now it's disengaged, freed from
the defilements that used to gang up to burn it. Its
desires for this or that thing, its concocting of this
or that thought, have all fallen away. So now it's empty
and disengaged. It can be empty in this way right before
your very eyes. Try to see it right now, before your
eyes, right now as I'm speaking and you're listening.
Probe on in so as to know.
If you can be constantly
aware in this way, you're following in the footsteps or
taking within you the quality called "buddho,"
which means one who knows, who is awake, who has
blossomed in the Dhamma. Even if you haven't fully
blossomed -- if you've blossomed only to the extent of
disengaging from the blatant levels of craving and
defilement -- you still benefit a great deal, for when
the mind really knows the defilements and can let them
go, it feels cool and refreshed in and of itself. This
is the exact opposite of the defilements that, as soon
as they arise, make us burn and smoulder inside. If we
don't have the mindfulness and discernment to help us
know, the defilements will burn us. But as soon as
mindfulness and discernment know, the fires go out --
and they go out cold.
Observe how the
defilements arise and take shape -- they also disband in
quick succession, but when they disband on their own in
this way, go out on their own in this way, they go out
hot. If we have mindfulness and discernment watching
over them, they go out cold. Look so that you can see
what the true knowledge of mindfulness and discernment
is like: It goes out; it goes out cold. As for the
defilements, even when they arise and disband in line
with their nature, they go out hot -- hot because we
latch onto them, hot because of attachment. When they go
out cold, look again -- it's because there's no
attachment. They've been let go, put out.
This is something really
worth looking into: the fact that there's something very
special like this in the mind -- special in that when it
really knows the truth, it isn't attached. It's
unentangled, empty, and free. This is how it's special.
It can grow empty of greed, anger, and delusion, step
after step. It can be empty of desire, empty of mental
processes. The important thing is that you really see
for yourself that the true nature of the mind is that it
can be empty... This is why I said this morning that
nibbana doesn't lie anywhere else. It lies right
here, right where things go out and are cool, go out and
are cool. It's staring us right in the face.
The Buddha taught that
we are to know with our own hearts and minds. Even
though there are many, many words and phrases coined to
explain the Dhamma, we need focus only on the things we
can know and see, extinguish and let go of, right in
each moment of the immediate present -- better than
taking on a load of other things. Once we can read and
comprehend our inner awareness, we'll be struck deep
within us that the Buddha awakened to the truth right
here in the heart. His truth is truly the language of
the heart.
When they translate the
Dhamma in all sorts of ways, it becomes something
ordinary. But if you keep close and careful watch right
at the heart and mind, you'll be able to see clearly, to
let go, to put down your burdens. If you don't know
right here, your knowledge will send out all sorts of
branches, turning into thought-formations with all sorts
of meanings in line with conventional labels -- and all
of them way off the mark.
If you know right at
your inner awareness and make it your constant stance,
there's nothing at all: no need to take hold of
anything, no need to label anything, no need to give
anything names. Right where craving arises, right where
it disbands: That's where you'll know what nibbana
is like... "Nibbana is simply this disbanding of
craving." That's what the Buddha stressed over and over
again.
Copyright © Khao Suan
Luang Dhamma Community 1995
For free
distribution only.
You may print copies of this work for your personal
use.
You may re-format and redistribute this work for use
on computers and computer networks,
provided that you charge no fees for its
distribution or use.
Otherwise, all rights reserved.
This article was originally published as the
Introduction to An Unentangled Knowing: Teachings
of a Thai Buddhist Laywoman (Barre:
Dhamma Dana Publications, 1995).
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