Buddho
by
Phra Ajaan Thate Desaransi
(Phra Nirodharansi Gambhirapannacariya)
(Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
When you go to study meditation with any group
or teacher who is experienced in a
particular form of meditation, you should
first make your heart confident that your teacher
is fully experienced in that form of meditation,
and be confident that the form of meditation
he teaches is the right path for sure.
At the same time, show respect for the place in
which you are to meditate. Only
then should you begin practicing.
Teachers in the past used to require a dedication
ceremony as a means of inspiring
confidence before you were to study meditation.
They would have you make an offering
of five pairs of beeswax candles and five
pairs of white flowers -- this was called the five
khandha -- or eight pairs of beeswax candles
and eight pairs of white flowers -- this was
called the eight khandha -- or one pair of
beeswax candles each weighing 15 grams and
an equal number of white flowers.
Then they would teach you their particular form of
meditation. This ancient custom
has its good points. There are many other ceremonies
as well, but I won't go into them.
I'll mention only a very simple, easy-to-follow ceremony
a little further on.
Only after you have inspired confidence in
your heart as already mentioned should you go
to the teacher experienced in that form of
meditation. If he is experienced in repeating
samma araham, he will teach you to repeat
samma araham, samma araham, samma
araham. Then he'll have you visualize
a bright, clear jewel two inches above your navel,
and tell you to focus your mind right there
as you continue your repetition, without letting
your mind slip away from the jewel.
In other words, you take the jewel as the focal point
of your mind.
If you go to a teacher experienced in meditating
on the rising and falling of the abdomen,
he will have you meditate on rising and falling,
and focus your mind on the different
motions of the body. For instance,
when you raise your foot, you think raising. When
you place your foot, you think placing, and
so on; or else he will have you focus
continually on being preoccupied with the
phenomenon of arising and passing away in
every motion or position of the body.
If you go to a teacher experienced in psychic
powers, he will have you repeat na ma ba
dha, na ma ba dha, and focus the mind on a
single object until it takes you to see heaven
and hell, deities and brahmas of all sorts,
to the point where you get carried away with
your visions.
If you go to a teacher experienced in breath
meditation, he will have you focus on your
in-and-out breath, and have you keep your
mind firmly preoccupied with nothing but the
in-and-out breath.
If you go to a teacher experienced in meditating
on buddho, he will have you repeat
buddho, buddho, buddho, and have you keep
the mind firmly in that meditation word until
you are fully skilled at it. Then
he will have you contemplate buddho and what it is that is
saying buddho. Once you see that
they are two separate things, focus on what is saying
buddho. As for the word buddho,
it will disappear, leaving only what it is that was saying
buddho. You then focus on what
it is that was saying buddho as your object.
People of our time -- or of any time, for that
matter -- regardless of how educated or
capable they may be (I don't want to criticize
any of us as tending to believe in things
whose truth we haven't tested, because after
all we all want to know and see the truth) and
especially those of us who are Buddhists:
Buddhism teaches causes and effects which
are entirely true, but why is it that we have
to fall for the claims and advertisements which
we hear everywhere? It must be
because people at present are impatient, and want to see
results before they have completed the causes,
in line with the fact that we are supposed
to be in an atomic age.
Buddhism teaches us to penetrate into the heart
and mind, which are mental phenomena.
As for the body, it is a physical phenomenon.
Physical phenomena have to lie under the
control of mental phenomena. When
we begin to practice meditation and train the mind to
be quiet and untroubled, I can't see that
we are creating any problems at that moment for
anyone at all. If we keep practicing
until we are skilled, then we will be calm and at
peace. If more and more people
practice this way, there will be peace and happiness all
over the world. As for the body,
we can train it to be peaceful only as long as the mind is
in full control. The minute mindfulness
lapses, the body will get back to its old affairs. So
let's try training the mind by repeating buddho.
Preliminary Steps to Practicing Meditation
Before practicing meditation on the word buddho,
you should start out with the
preliminary steps. I.e., inspire
confidence in your mind, as already mentioned, and then
bow down three times, saying:
Araham samma-sambuddho bhagava -- The Blessed One is pure and fully self-awakened.
Buddham bhagavantam abhivademi -- To the Blessed, Awakened One, I bow down.
(Bow down once.)
Svakkhato bhagavata dhammo -- the Dhamma is well-taught by the Blessed One.
Dhammam namassami -- To the Dhamma, I bow down.
(Bow down once.)
Supatipanno bhagavato savaka-sangho -- The
Community of the Blessed One's disciples
have conducted themselves rightly.
Sangham namami -- To the Community, I bow down.
(Bow down once.)
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa. (Three times).
(Think of the virtues of the Buddha, the foremost
teacher of the world, released from
suffering and defilement of every sort, always
serene and secure. Then bow down three
times.)
Note: These preliminary steps are
simply an example. There's nothing wrong with
chanting more than this if you have more to
chant, but you should bow down to the
Buddha as the first step each time you meditate,
unless the place in which you are
meditating is unconducive.
Now, sit in meditation, your right leg on top
of left, your hands palm-up in your lap, your
right hand on top of your left.
Sit straight. Repeat the word buddho in your mind,
focusing your attention in the middle of your
chest, at the heart. Don't let your attention
stray out ahead or behind. Be
mindful to keep your mind in place, steady in its
one-pointedness, and you will enter into a
state of concentration.
When you enter into concentration, the mind
may go so blank that you don't even know
how long you are sitting. By the
time you come out of concentration, many hours may
have passed. For this reason,
you shouldn't fix a time limit for yourself when sitting in
meditation. Let things follow
their own course.
The mind in true concentration is the mind
in a state of one- pointedness. If the mind
hasn't reached a state of one-pointedness,
it isn't yet in concentration, because the true
heart is only one. If there are
many mental states going on, you haven't penetrated into
the heart. You've only reached
the mind.
Before you practice meditation, you should
first learn the difference between the heart and
the mind, for they aren't the same thing.
The mind is what thinks and forms perceptions
and ideas about all sorts of things.
The heart is what simply stays still and knows that it is
still, without forming any further thoughts
at all. Their difference is like that between a
river and waves on the river.
All sciences and all defilements are able to
arise because the mind thinks and forms ideas
and strays out in search of them.
You will be able to see these things clearly with your
own heart once the mind becomes still and
reaches the heart.
Water is something clean and clear by its very
nature. If anyone puts dye into the water, it
will change in line with the dye.
But once the water is filtered and distilled, it will become
clean and clear as before. This
is an analogy for the heart and the mind.
Actually, the Buddha taught that the mind is
identical with the heart. If there is no heart,
there is no mind. The mind is
a condition. The heart itself has no conditions.
In
practicing meditation, no matter what the
teacher or method: If it's correct, it will have to
penetrate into the heart.
When you reach the heart, you will see all
your defilements, because the mind gathers all
defilements into itself. So now
how you deal with them is up to you.
When doctors are going to cure a disease, they
first have to find the cause of the disease.
Only then can they treat it with the right
medicine.
As we start meditating longer and longer, repeating
buddho, buddho, buddho, the mind will
gradually let go of its distractions and restlessness,
and gather in to stay with buddho. It
will stay firm, with buddho its sole preoccupation,
until you see that the state of mind
which says buddho is identical with the mind
itself at all times, regardless of whether you
are sitting, standing, walking or lying down.
No matter what your activity, you will see the
mind bright and clear with buddho.
Once you have reached this stage, keep the mind
there as long as you can. Don't
be in a hurry to want to see this or be that -- because
desire is the most serious obstacle to the
concentrated mind. Once desire arises, your
concentration will immediately deteriorate,
because the basis of your concentration --
buddho -- isn't solid. When this
happens, you can't grab hold of any foundation at all, and
you get really upset. All you
can think of is the state of concentration in which you used
to be calm and happy, and this makes the mind
even more agitated.
Practice meditation the same way farmers grow
rice. They're in no hurry. They scatter
the seed, plow, harrow, plant the seedlings,
step by step, without skipping any of the
steps. Then they wait for the
plants to grow. Even when they don't yet see the rice
appearing, they are confident that the rice
is sure to appear some day in the future. Once
the rice appears, they are convinced that
they're sure to reap results. They don't pull on
the rice plants to make them come out with
rice when they want it. Anyone who did that
would end up with no results at all.
The same holds true with meditation.
You can't be in a hurry. You can't skip any of the
steps. You have to make yourself
firmly confident that, "This is the meditation word
which will make my mind concentrated for sure."
Don't have any doubts as to whether
the meditation word is right for your temperament,
and don't think that, "That person used
this meditation word with these or those results,
but when I use it, my mind doesn't settle
down. It doesn't work for me at
all." Actually, if the mind is firmly set on the meditation
word you are repeating, then no matter what
the word, it's sure to work -- because you
repeat the word simply to make the mind steady
and firm, that's all. As for any results
apart from that, they all depend on each person's
individual potential and capabilities.
Once in the Buddha's time there was a monk
sitting in meditation near a pond who saw a
heron diving down to catch fish and eat them.
He took that as his meditation subject until
he succeeded in becoming an arahant.
I've never seen a heron eating fish mentioned as
a subject in any of the meditation manuals,
but he was able to use it to meditate until he
attained arahantship -- which illustrates
what I have just said.
When the mind is intent on staying within the
bounds of its meditation word buddho, with
mindfulness in control, it is sure to grow
out of its rebelliousness. We have to train and
restrain it, because we are looking for peace
and contentment for the mind. Ordinarily, the
mind tends to be preoccupied with looking
for distraction, as I have already explained, and
for the most part it strays off to this sort
of distraction: When we start meditating buddho,
buddho, buddho, as soon as we focus the mind
on buddho, it won't stay there. It'll run out
to think of whatever work we are about to
start or have left undone. It thinks about doing
this and doing that until it gets all worked
up, afraid that the work won't come out well or
won't succeed. The work we've
been assigned by other people or which we're doing on
our own will be a waste of time or will cause
us to lose face if we don't do as we've been
told....
This is one of the distractions which prevent
new meditators from attaining
concentration. You have to pull
your mind back to buddho, buddho, buddho, and tell
yourself, "Thoughts of this sort aren't the
path to peace; the true path to peace is to keep
the mind with buddho and nothing else"
-- and then keep on repeating buddho, buddho,
buddho....
After a moment, the mind will go straying out
again, this time to your family -- your
children, your wife or husband:
How are they getting along? Are they healthy? Are
they
eating well? If you're far apart,
you wonder about where they're staying, what they're
eating. Those who have left home
think about those at home. Those at home think about
those who have gone far away -- afraid that
they aren't safe, that other people will molest
them, that they have no friends, that they're
lonely -- thinking in 108 different ways,
whatever the mind can imagine, all of which
exaggerate the truth.
Or if you're still young and single, you think
about having fun with your friends -- the
places you used to go together, the good times
you had, the things you used to do -- to
the point where you actually say something
or laugh out loud. This sort of defilement is
the worst of the bunch.
When you are meditating buddho, buddho, buddho,
your defilements see that the situation
is getting out of hand and that you'll escape
from their control, so they look for things to
tie you down even more tightly all the time.
Never from the day of your birth have you
ever practiced concentration at all.
You've simply let the mind follow the moods of the
defilements. Only now have you
begun to practice, so when you repeat buddho, buddho,
buddho to get the mind to settle down with
buddho, it's going to wriggle away in the same
way that fish try to wriggle back into the
water when they're tossed up on land. So you
have to pull the mind back to buddho.
Buddho is something cool and calm.
It's the path for giving rise to peace and contentment
-- the only path that will release us from
the suffering and stress in this world.
So you pull the mind back to buddho.
This time it begins to settle down. As soon as you
feel that it's staying put, you begin to get
a sense that when the mind stays put, it is rested
and at ease in a way different from when it's
not still, when it's restless and upset. You
make up your mind to be careful and alert
to keep the mind in that state and. . . Oops.
There it goes again. Now it's
taking your financial interests as an excuse, saying that if
you don't do this or search for that, you'll
miss out on a really great opportunity. So you
focus your mind on that instead of your meditation
word. As for where buddho has gone,
you haven't the least idea. By
the time you realize that buddho has disappeared, it's
already too late -- which is why they say
that the mind is restless, slippery and hard to
control, like a monkey which can never sit
still.
Sometimes, after you've been sitting in meditation
a long time, you begin to worry that
your blood won't be flowing properly, that
your nerves will die from lack of blood, that
you'll grow numb and end up paralyzed.
If you're meditating far from home or in a forest,
it's even worse: You're afraid
that snakes will bite you, tigers will eat you, or ghosts will
haunt you, making all kinds of scary faces.
Your fear of death can whisper to you in all
sorts of way, all of which are simply instances
of you yourself scaring yourself. The truth
is nothing at all like what you imagine.
Never from the day of your birth have you ever
seen a tiger eat even a single person.
You've never once seen a ghost -- you don't even
know what it would look like, but you fashion
up pictures to scare yourself.
The obstacles to meditation mentioned here
are simply examples. There are actually
many, many more. Those who meditate
will find this out for themselves.
If you hold buddho close to the heart, and
use your mindfulness to keep the mind with
nothing but buddho, no dangers will come your
way. So have firm faith in buddho. I
guarantee that there will be no dangers at
all -- unless you've done bad kamma in the past,
which is something beyond anyone's power to
protect you from. Even the Buddha
himself can't protect you from it.
When people begin meditating, their confidence
tends to be weak. No matter what their
meditation subject, these sorts of defilements
are sure to interfere, because these
defilements form the basis of the world and
of the mind. The minute we meditate and
make the mind one-pointed, the defilements
see that we're going to get away from them,
so they come thronging around so that we won't
be able to escape from the world.
When we see how really serious and harmful
they are, we should make our minds
forthright and our confidence solid and strong,
telling ourselves that we've let ourselves
be deceived into believing the defilements
for many lifetimes; it's time now that we be
willing to believe the Buddha's teachings
and take buddho as our refuge. We then make
mindfulness solid, and fix the mind firmly
in buddho. We give our lives to buddho, and
won't let our minds slip away from it.
When we make this sort of commitment, the mind
will drop straight into one-pointedness and
enter concentration.
When you first enter concentration, this is
what it's like: You'll have no idea at all of what
concentration or one-pointedness of mind is
going to feel like. You are simply intent on
keeping mindfulness firmly focused on one
object -- and the power of a mind focused
firmly on one object is what will bring you
to a state of concentration. You won't be
thinking at all that concentration will be
like this or like that, or that you want it to be like
this or like that. It will simply
take its own way, automatically. No one can force it.
At that moment you will feel as if you are
in another world (the world of the mind), with a
sense of ease and solitude to which nothing
else in the world can compare. When the
mind withdraws from concentration, you will
regret that that mood has passed, and you
will remember it clearly. All
that we say about concentration comes from the mind which
has withdrawn from that state.
As long as it is still gathered in that state, we aren't
interested in what anyone else says or does.
You have to train the mind to enter this sort
of concentration often, so as to become skilled
and adept, but don't try to remember your
past states of concentration, and don't let
yourself want your concentration to be like
it was before -- because it won't be that way,
and you will just be making more trouble for
yourself. Simply contemplate buddho,
buddho, and keep your mind with your mental
repetition. What it does then is its own
business.
After the mind has first attained to concentration,
it won't be the same way the next time
around, but don't worry about it.
Whatever it's like, don't worry about it. Just make sure
that you get it centered. When
the results come out in many different ways, your
understanding will broaden and you'll come
to develop many different techniques for
dealing with the mind.
What I've mentioned here is simply to be taken
as an example. When you follow these
instructions, don't give them too much weight,
or they will turn into allusions to the past,
and your meditation won't get anywhere.
Simply remember them as something to use for
the sake of comparison after your meditation
has begun to progress.
No matter what method you use -- buddho, rising
& falling or samma araham -- when the
mind is about to settle down in concentration,
you won't be thinking that the mind is about
to settle down, or is settling down, or anything
at all. It will settle down automatically on
its own. You won't even know when
you let go of your meditation word. The mind will
simply have a separate calm and peace which
isn't in this world or another world or
anything of the sort. There's
no one and nothing at all, just the mind's own separate state,
which is called the world of the mind.
In that state there won't be the word 'world' or
anything else. The conventional
realities of the world won't appear there, and thus no
insight of any sort will arise in there at
all. The point is simply that you train the mind to be
centered, and then compare it to the state
of mind which isn't centered so that you can see
how they differ, how the mind which has attained
concentration and then withdraws to
contemplate matters of the world and the Dhamma
differs from the mind which hasn't
attained concentration.
The heart and the mind. Let's talk
some more about the heart and mind so that you'll
understand. After all, we're talking
about training the mind in concentration: If you don't
understand the relationship between the heart
and the mind, you won't know where or
how to practice concentration.
Everyone born -- human or animal -- has a heart
and mind, but the heart and mind have
different duties. The mind thinks,
wanders and forms ideas of all sorts, in line with where
the defilements lead it. As for
the heart, it's simply what knows. It doesn't form any ideas
at all. It's neutral -- in the
middle -- with regard to everything. The awareness which
is
neutral: That's the heart.
The heart doesn't have a body.
It's a mental phenomenon. It's simply awareness.
You
can place it anywhere at all.
It doesn't lie inside or outside the body. When we call the
heart-muscle the heart, that's not the true
heart. It's simply an organ for pumping blood
throughout the body so as to keep it alive.
If the heart-muscle doesn't pump blood
throughout the body, life can't last.
People in general are always talking about
the heart: "My heart feels happy... sad...
heavy... light... down..." Everything
is a matter of the heart. Abhidhamma experts,
however, speak in terms of the mind:
the mind in a wholesome state, the mind in an
unwholesome state, the mind in a neutral state,
the mind on the level of form, the mind on
the formless level, the mind on the transcendent
level and so on, but none of them know
what the real heart and mind are like.
The mind is what thinks and forms ideas.
It has to make use of the six senses as its
tools. As soon as the eye sees
a visual object, the ear hears a sound, the nose smells an
aroma, the tongue tastes a flavor, the body
comes into contact with a tactile sensation --
cold, hot, hard or soft -- or the intellect
thinks of an idea in line with its defilements, good or
bad: If any of these things are
good, the mind is pleased; if they're bad, it's displeased.
All of this is an affair of the mind, or of
defilement. Aside from these six senses, there's
nothing the mind can make use of.
In the texts they are analyzed into the six faculties, the
six elements, the six forms of contact, and
all sorts of other things, but all these things lie
within the six senses. So these
are characteristics of the mind: that which can never sit
still.
When you train the mind -- or, in other words,
practice concentration -- you have to get
control over the mind which is wriggling after
the six senses, as already explained, and
make it stop still with one thing:
its meditation word, buddho. Don't let it go straying out
ahead or behind. Make it stay
still, and know that it's staying still: That's the heart.
The
heart has nothing to do with any of the six
senses, which is why it's called the heart.
When people in general talk about the heart
of something, they are referring to its center.
Even when they talk about their own hearts,
they point to the center of the chest.
Actually, the heart doesn't lie in any particular
place at all -- as I have already explained --
although it lies right in the center of everything.
If you want to understand what the heart is,
you can try an experiment. Breathe in deeply
and hold your breath for a moment.
At that point there won't be anything at all except for
one thing: neutral awareness.
That's the heart, or 'what knows'. But if you try to catch
hold of the heart in this way, you can't hold
on to it for very long -- only as long as you can
hold your breath -- but you can give it a
try just to see what the true heart is like.
(Holding the breath can help reduce physical
pain. People who are suffering from great
pain have to hold their breath as one way
-- fairly effective -- of relieving their pain.)
Once you realize that the heart and mind have
different duties and characteristics like this,
you'll find it easier to train the mind.
Actually, the heart and the mind are really the same
thing. As the Buddha said, the
mind is identical with the heart. When we practice
concentration, it's enough just to train the
mind; once the mind is trained, that's where
we'll see the heart.
Once the mind has been fully trained by using
mindfulness to keep it with buddho as its
only preoccupation, it won't go straying after
different things, and instead will gather into
oneness. The meditation word will
disappear without your being aware of it, and you will
feel a sense of peace and ease which nothing
else can equal. Those who have never
experienced this ease before, when they first
experience it, won't be able to describe it,
because no one else in the world has ever
experienced that kind of peace and ease. Even
though other people have experienced it, it's
not the same. For this reason, you find it
hard to describe -- although you can describe
it to yourself. If you try to describe it to
others, you have to use similes and analogies
before they'll understand you. Things of
this sort are personal: Only you
can know them for yourself.
In addition, if you have developed a lot of
potential in previous lifetimes, all sorts of
amazing things can happen. For
example, you may gain knowledge of heavenly beings
or hungry ghosts. You may learn
about your own past and future, and that of other
people: In that particular lifetime
you were like this; in the future you'll be like that. Even
though you didn't intend to know these things,
when the mind attains concentration it can
know on its own in a very amazing way.
This sort of thing is something which really
fascinates beginning meditators. When it
happens to them, they like to brag to other
people. When those people try to meditate, but
don't get the knowledge or abilities, they
become discouraged, thinking that they don't
have the merit or potential to meditate, and
they begin to lose faith in the practice.
As for those who see these sorts of things,
when that knowledge or ability deteriorates --
because they've been carried away by external
things, and haven't taken the heart as their
foundation -- they won't be able to grab hold
of anything at all. When they think of the
things they used to know, their minds become
even more stirred up. People who like to
brag will take the old things they used to
see and talk about them in glowing terms. Avid
listeners really love to listen to this sort
of thing, but avid meditators are unimpressed --
because true meditators like to listen only
to things which are present and true.
The Buddha taught that whether his teachings
will flourish or degenerate depends on
those who practice them. The teachings
degenerate when meditators get just a little bit of
knowledge and then go bragging to other people,
talking about external matters with no
substance at all, instead of explaining the
basic principles of meditation. When they do
this, they make the religion degenerate without
their even realizing it.
Those who make the religion flourish are those
who speak about things which are useful
and true. They don't speak just
for the fun of it. They speak in terms of cause and effect:
"When you meditate like this, repeating the
meditation word in this way, it will make the
mind gather into one and snuff out its defilements
and restlessness like this...."
When you meditate on buddho, be patient.
Don't be in a hurry. Be confident in your
meditation word, and use mindfulness to keep
the mind with its buddho. Your confidence
is what will make the mind firm and unwavering,
able to let go of all its doubts and
uncertainties. The mind will gather
in on its meditation word, and mindfulness will keep it
solely with buddho at all times.
Whether you sit, stand, walk, lie down, or whatever work
you do, mindfulness will be alert to nothing
but buddho. If your mindfulness is still weak,
and your techniques still few, you have to
hold on to buddho as your foundation.
Otherwise your meditation won't progress;
or even if it does progress, it won't have any
foundation.
For concentration to be strong, the mind has
to be resolute. When mindfulness is strong
and the mind resolute, you decide that this
is what you want: "If I can't catch hold of
buddho, or see buddho in my heart, or get
the mind to stay put solely with buddho, I won't
get up from my meditation. Even
if my life will end, I don't care." When you do this, the
mind will gather into one faster than you
realize it. The meditation word buddho, or
whatever it is that may have been bothering
or perplexing you, will vanish in the flash of
an eye. Even your body, which
you have been attached to for so long, won't appear to
you. All that remains is the heart
-- simple awareness -- cool, calm and at ease.
People who practice meditation really like
it when this happens. The next time around,
they want it to happen again, and so it doesn't
happen again. That's because the desire
keeps it from happening. Concentration
is something very subtle and sensitive. You
can't force it to be like this or that --
and at the same time you can't force the mind not to
enter concentration either.
If you're impatient, things get even more fouled
up. You have to be very patient. Whether
or not the mind is going to attain concentration,
you've meditated on buddho in the past,
so you just keep meditating on buddho.
Act as if you had never meditated on buddho
before. Make the mind neutral
and even, let the breath flow gently, and use mindfulness
to focus the mind on buddho and nothing else.
When the time comes for the mind to
enter concentration, it will do it on its
own. You can't arrange the way it will happen.
If it
were something you could arrange, all the
people in the world would have become
arahants long ago.
Knowing how to meditate, but not doing it right;
having done it right once, and wanting it
to be that way again, and yet it doesn't happen:
All of these things are obstacles in
practicing concentration.
In meditating on buddho, you have to get so
that you are quick and adept. When a good or
a bad mood strikes you, you have to be able
to enter concentration immediately. Don't let
the mind be affected by that mood.
Whenever you think of buddho, the mind gathers
immediately: When you can do this,
your mind will be solid and able to rely on itself.
When you have practiced so that you are adept
and experienced in this way, after a while
you will find that your defilements and attachments
to all things will gradually disappear
on their own. You don't have to
go clearing away this or that defilement, telling yourself
that this or that defilement has to be removed
with this or that teaching or this or that
method. Be content with whatever
method you find works for you. That's plenty
enough.
To have the defilements gradually disappear
with the method I've just explained is better
than trying to arrange things, entering the
four levels of absorption, sustained thought,
rapture and pleasure, leaving just one-pointedness
and equanimity; or trying to arrange
the first stage of the path to nibbana by
abandoning self-identity views, uncertainty and
attachment to precepts & practices; or
by looking at your various defilements, telling
yourself, "With that defilement, I was able
to contemplate in such-and-such a way, so I've
gone beyond that defilement. I
have so-and-so many defilements left. If I can
contemplate in such-and-such a way, my defilements
will be finished" -- but you don't
realize that the state of mind which wants
to see and know and attain these things is a
defilement fixed firmly in the mind.
When you finish your contemplation, the mind is back
in its original state, and hasn't gained anything
at all. On top of that, if someone comes
along and says something which goes against
the way you see things, you start
disagreeing violently, like a burning fire
into which someone pours kerosene.
So hold firmly to your meditation word, buddho.
Even if you don't attain anything else, at
least you've got your meditation word as your
foundation. The various preoccupations of
the mind will lessen, or may even disappear,
which is better than not having any
foundation to hold to at all.
Actually, all meditators have to hold firmly
to their meditation word. Only then can they be
said to be meditation with a foundation.
When their meditation deteriorates, they'll be able
to use it as something to hold to.
The Buddha taught that people who make the
effort to abandon defilement have to act like
old-time warriors. In the past,
they'd have to build a fortress with strong walls, moats,
gates and towers to protect themselves from
enemy attack. When an intelligent warrior
went out to battle and saw that he was no
match for the enemy, he would retreat into his
fortress and defend it so that the enemy couldn't
destroy it. At the same time, he would
gather enough troops, weapons and food (i.e.,
make his concentration forthright and
strong) and then go out to resume his fight
with the enemy (i.e., all the forms of
defilement).
Concentration is a very important strength.
If you don't have concentration, where will
your discernment gain any strength?
The discernment of insight meditation is not
something that can be fashioned into being
by arrangement. Instead, it arises from
concentration which has been mastered until
it is good and solid.
Even those who are said to attain Awakening
with 'dry insight': If they don't have any
mental stillness, where will they get any
insight? It's simply that their stillness isn't fully
mastered. Only when we put the
matter this way does it make any sense.
When your concentration is solid and steady
to the point where you can enter and leave it
at will, you will be able to stay with it
long and contemplate the body in terms of its
unattractiveness, or in terms of its physical
elements. Or, if you like, you can contemplate
the people of the world until you see them
all as skeletons, or you can contemplate the
entire world as empty space....
Once the mind is fully centered, then no matter
whether you are sitting, standing, walking
or lying down, the mind will be centered at
times. You will be able to see clearly how your
own defilements -- greed, anger and delusion,
which arise from the mind -- arise from this
and that cause, how they remain in this or
that way, and you will be able to find means to
abandon them with this or that technique.
This is like the water in a lake which has
been muddy for hundreds and hundreds of years
suddenly becoming clear so that you can see
all the things lying along the lake-bottom --
things which you never dreamed were there
before. This is called insight -- seeing things
as they truly are. Whatever sort
of truth they have, that's the truth you see, without
deviating from that truth.
Forcing the mind to be still can make it let
go of defilement, but it lets go in the same way a
person cuts grass, cutting just the part above
ground, without digging up the roots. The
roots are sure to send up new shoots when
rain falls again. In other words, you do see
the harm of the preoccupations which arise
from the six senses, but as soon as you see it,
you retreat into stillness without contemplating
those preoccupations as carefully as you
do when the mind is in concentration.
In short, you simply want stillness, without wanting
to spend any time in contemplation -- like
a ground lizard which relies on its hole for
safety. As soon as it sees an
enemy coming, it runs into its hole, escaping danger only
for a while.
If you want to uproot your defilements, then
when you see that defilement springs from
the six senses -- for instance, the eye sees
a visual object or the ear hears a sound,
contact is made which causes you to be pleased
or displeased, happy or sad, and then
you grasp onto it as your preoccupation, making
the mind murky, disturbed and upset,
sometimes to the point where you can't eat
or sleep, and can even commit suicide -- when
you see this clearly, make your concentration
firm and then focus your mind exclusively
on examining that particular preoccupation.
For instance, if the eye sees an attractive
visual object which makes you feel pleased,
focus on examining just that sense of
pleasure, to find out whether it arises from
the eye or from the visual object.
If you examine the visual object, you see that
it's just a physical phenomenon. Whether
it's good or bad, it doesn't try to persuade
you to be pleased or displeased, or to make you
love it or hate it. It's simply
a visual object which appears and then disappears in line with
its own nature.
When you turn to examine the eye which sees
the visual object, you find that the eye goes
looking for objects and, as soon as it finds
one, light gets reflected into the optic nerves so
that all kinds of visible forms appear.
The eye doesn't try to persuade you to be pleased
or displeased, to love or to hate anything.
Its duty is simply to see. Once it has seen a
visible form, the form disappears.
As for the other senses and their objects,
attractive or unattractive, they should be
examined in just the same way.
When you contemplate in this way, you will
see clearly that all the things in the world
which become objects of defilement do so because
of these six senses. If you
contemplate the six senses so that you don't
tag along after them, defilements won't arise
within you. On the contrary:
Insight and discernment will arise instead, all because of
these same six senses. The six
senses are the media of goodness and evil. We will head
for a good or a bad destination in the next
life because of the way we use them.
The world seems broad because the mind isn't
centered, and is left free to wander among
the objects of the six senses.
The world will narrow down when the mind has been
trained in concentration so that it lies under
your control and can contemplate the six
senses exclusively within it.
In other words, when the mind is fully concentrated, the
outer senses -- the eye seeing forms, the
ear hearing sounds and so on -- won't appear at
all. All that will appear are
the forms and sounds which are mental phenomena present
exclusively in that concentration.
You won't be paying any attention to the outer senses
at all.
When your concentration is fully solid and
strong, you will be able to contemplate this
world of the mind which gives rise to sensory
contact, perceptions, preoccupations and all
defilements. The mind will withdraw
from everything leaving just the heart, or simple
awareness.
The heart and the mind have different characteristics.
The mind is what thinks, forming
perceptions and preoccupations to the point
of latching on holding them to itself. When it
sees the suffering, harm and stress which
come from holding onto all the defilements, it
will go and withdraw from all preoccupations
and defilements. The mind will then be the
heart. This is how the heart and
mind differ.
The heart is what is neutral and still.
It doesn't think anything at all. It is simply aware of
its stillness. The heart is a
genuinely neutral or central phenomenon. Neutral with no
past, no future, no good, no evil:
That's the heart. When we talk about the heart of
anything, we mean its center.
Even the human heart, which is a mental phenomenon, we
say lies in the center of the chest.
But where the real heart is, we don't know. Try
focusing your attention on any part of the
body, and you'll feel the awareness of that
spot. Or you can focus your attention
outside the body -- on a post or the wall of a house,
for example -- and that's the spot you'll
be aware of.
So we can conclude that the true heart is still
and neutral awareness. Wherever there is
neutral awareness, that's where the heart
is.
When people in general talk about the heart,
that's not the true heart. It's simply a set of
muscles and valves for pumping blood throughout
the body to keep it alive. If this pump
doesn't send blood throughout the body, the
body can't live. It'll have to die. The same
holds true with the brain. The
mind thinks of good and evil by using the brain as its tool.
The nervous system of the brain is a physical
phenomenon. When its various causal
factors are cut off, this physical phenomenon
can't last. It has to stop.
But as for the mind, which is a mental phenomenon,
Buddhism teaches that it continues
to exist and can take birth again.
This mental phenomenon will stop only when insight
discerns its causal factors and uproots their
underlying causes.
None of the various subjects and sciences of
the world have an end point. The more you
study them, the more they fan out.
Only Buddhism can teach you to reach an end. In the
first stage, it teaches you to acquaint yourself
with your body, to see how it is made up of
various things (the 32 parts) put together,
and what their duties are. At the same time,
Buddhism teaches you to see that the body
is inherently unattractive. It teaches you to
acquaint yourself with this world (the world
of a human being), which is made up of
suffering and stress, and which will ultimately
have to fall apart by its very nature.
So now that we have received this body -- even
though it is full of foul and unattractive
things, and even though it is made up of all
kinds of suffering and stress -- we're still able
to depend on it for a while, so we should
use it to do good to repay our debts to the world
before we leave it at death.
The Buddha teaches that although the nature
of a person (this world) is to fall apart and
die, the mind -- the overseer of this world
-- must come back to be reborn as long as it still
has defilements. Thus he teaches
us to practice concentration, which is an affair
exclusively of the mind. Once
we have practiced concentration, we will fell every sensory
contact inside, just at the mind.
We won't be concerned with out seeing and hearing at
the eye or the ear. Instead, we
will be aware of the sensory contact right at the mind.
This is what it means to narrow down the world.
The senses are the best means for taking the
measure of your own mind. When sensory
contact strikes the mind, does it have an
impact on you? If it has a lot of impact, that
shows that your mindfulness is weak, and your
foundation is still shaky. If it has only a
little impact, or no impact at all, that shows
that your mindfulness is strong, and you are
fully able to care for yourself.
These things are like Devadatta, who created
trouble for the Bodhisattva all along. If not
for Devadatta, the Bodhisattva wouldn't have
been able to bring his character to full
perfection. Once his character
had been fully perfected, he was able to gain Awakening
and become the Buddha. Before
gaining Awakening, he had to withstand the massive
armies of temptation; and right after his
Awakening, the three daughters of temptation
came to test him once more. As
a result, the people of the world have praised him ever
since for having conquered defilement in this
world once and for all.
As long as the inner senses still exist, mental
contact is still a preoccupation. Thus those
who know, having seen the harm of these things,
are willing to withdraw from them,
leaving just the heart which is neutral...neutral...neutral,
with no thinking, no imagining, no
fashioning of anything at all.
When this is the case, where will this world be formed?
This is how the Buddha teaches us to reach
the world's end
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