Ajahn Sumedho
Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho. This is the second part of the first chapter. The book is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.
When you try to conceive of mettā as ‘love’, loving something in terms of liking it, it makes it impossible to sustain when you get to things you can’t stand, people you hate and things like that. Metta is very hard to come to terms with on a conceptual level. To love your enemies, to love people you hate or can’t stand, is an impossible dilemma on the conceptual level. But in terms of sati-sampajañña, it involves acceptance – because it’s about including everything you like and dislike. Mettā is not analytical; it’s not dwelling on why you hate somebody. It’s not trying to figure out why I hate this person, but it includes the whole thing – the feeling, the person, myself – all in the same moment. So, it’s an embracing, a focus that includes and is non-critical. You’re not trying to figure out anything, but just being open, accepting and patient with it.
With food, for instance, we eat here in the dhutaṅga tradition – that is, eating from alms-bowls. I, at least, can no longer convince myself that I’m only eating one meal a day, because of this breakfast we are offered. But, however many meals a day we eat, we are encouraged to use restraint: not because there’s anything wrong with enjoying a meal; it’s not that food is dangerous and that any kind of pleasure you receive from eating will bind you to rebirth again in the saṁsāra-vaṭṭa (the cycle of birth and death) – that’s another view and opinion. It’s a matter of recognizing the simplicity of the life that we have. It simplifies everything. This is why I like this way.
Just notice your attitude towards food. The greed, the aversion or the guilt about eating or enjoying good food – include it all. There’s no attitude that you must have towards food other than an attitude of sati-sampajañña. It’s not making eating into any hassle. When I used to go on fasts, Ajahn Chah would point out that I was making a hassle out of my food. I couldn’t just eat; I was making it more difficult than it needed to be. Then there is the guilt that comes up if you eat too much or you find yourself trying to get the good bits. It gets complicated. I couldn’t just be greedy and shameless, I also had to have a strong sense of guilt around it and hope that nobody would notice. I had to keep it a secret, because I didn’t want to look greedy, I wanted to look as if I weren’t.
I remember that whilst staying with Luang Por Jun, I was trying to be a strict vegetarian, really strict. At his monastery, Wat Bung Khao Luang, they had certain kinds of dishes that didn’t have any fish sauce in them, or any kind of meat or fish. But, as most of you know, in Thailand most of the food has fish sauce or some kind of animal mixtures in it. So, it was difficult because I had very little choice, and people would always have to make special things for me. I always had to be special. It had to be Phra Sumedho’s food and then the rest. That was hard to deal with – to be a foreigner, a phra farang, and then to have a special diet and special privileges. That was hard for me to impose on the group. As I was helping to pass out the food, I’d get very possessive. I felt I had a right to have a lot of the vegetable dishes they did have, because the other monks were eating all the fish, chicken and things like that. I found myself aiming for the vegetarian dishes first so that I could pass them out according to my own needs. It brought up a really childish tendency in me. Then one day another monk saw me doing this, so he grabbed the vegetarian dish first and only gave me a little spoonful. I was so angry when I saw that. I took this fermented fish sauce, this really strong stuff, and when I went past his bowl, I splattered it all over his food! Fortunately, we were forbidden to hit each other. This is an absolute necessity for men – to have rules against physical violence!
“I was trying to live up to an ideal of vegetarian purity, and yet in the process having violent feelings towards other monks. What’s this about? It was a vindictive act to splatter all that strong chilli sauce with rotten fish in it over some monk’s food. It was a violent act in order for me to keep a sense that I’m a pure vegetarian. So, I began to question whether I wanted to make food into such a big deal in my life. Was I wanting to live my life as a vegetarian or what? Was that the main focus that I was aiming at? Just contemplating this, I began to see the suffering I created around my idealism. I noticed Ajahn Chah certainly enjoyed his food and he had a joyful presence. It wasn’t like an ascetic trip where you’re eating nettle soup and rejecting the good bits; that’s the other extreme.
Sati-sampajañña includes, and that’s the attitude of a samaṇa, a contemplative, rather than the ascetic who says, ‘Sensual temptations, the sensual world, sensual pleasures are bad and dangerous. You’ve got to fight against them and resist them at all costs in order to become pure. Once you get rid of sexual desire, greed for food, all these other kinds of greedy sense things – these coarse, gross things – you don’t have any more bad thoughts, you don’t have any more greed, hatred and delusion in your mind. You’re absolutely sterilized from any of those things. They’re eradicated, totally wiped out like toilet cleansers that kill every germ in sight – then you’re pure.’ Then you’ve managed to kill everything – including yourself. Is that the aim? That’s taking asceticism to the position of annihilation, attakilamathānuyoga or self-torture.
Or there is the opposite extreme of kāmasukhallikānuyoga, sensual indulgence, ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die. Enjoy life. Life is a banquet and most of the suckers are starving to death.’ This is a quote from a fifty’s movie called Auntie Mame. Auntie Mame managed to really enjoy life, in the movie anyway. She’s not a real woman but a kind of icon of intelligence and beauty, one who just lives life to the hilt and enjoys everything. That’s a very attractive idol: one who thinks this life is meant to be full of pleasure, happiness and love. Grasping that is kāmasukhallikānuyoga.
For the samaṇa, it’s a matter of awakening to these extremes; awareness includes both. It’s not like taking sides – that we’re rejecting or condemning Auntie Mame and ‘Life is a banquet,’ or the extreme ascetic, the life-denying annihilator. But we can see that these are conditions we create in our minds. Always wanting life to be at its best, a party, a banquet, one pleasure after another, or thinking to have any pleasure or enjoyment is wrong and bad, that it’s lesser and dangerous; these are the conditions we create. But the samaṇa life is right now, it’s like this. It’s opening to what we tend not to notice when we’re seeking these two extremes as our goal.
Life is like this. You can’t say it’s a banquet all the time. Breath going in … I wouldn’t describe it as a banquet, or that the sound of silence is life at its best, where it’s just one laugh after another. Most of our experience is neither one extreme nor another; it’s like this. Most of one’s life is not peak moments, either in the heights or the depths, but it’s neither-nor, it’s that which we don’t notice if we’re primed to extremes.
In terms of beauty, for example, I find it helpful to come from sati-sampajañña rather than from personal attachment. With beautiful objects, beautiful things, beautiful people or whatever – coming from personal habits is dangerous because of the desire to possess them, to have them for yourself, or be attracted and get overwhelmed by the desires that arise from seeing beauty through ignorance. With experiencing beauty from sati-sampajañña, one can just be aware of the beauty as beauty. It also includes one’s own tendencies to want to own it, take it, touch it or fear it; it includes that. When you’re letting go of that, then beauty itself is joy.
Part 3, continued next week 23rd May 2024
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