[Excerpts from an article by Ajahn Sucitto]

In the flow of events of people and things and ups and downs, I get jangled and tense. Is there an end to this?’ It’s good to remember one of Ajahn Chah’s sayings: ‘The only thing that has to end is the desire that it all end.’ Kamma, the restless search of the self: that’s what has to end. We’re living in the field of kamma, of mental patterns and programs that have been established in us from what we’ve participated in. And as long as we’re centred in and attached to, that field of kamma, we are in the ups and downs of ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ duality of ‘me and other.’ Subject/object, experienced as ‘I and myself’ – in which ‘I’ becomes the agent, the cause and ‘me’ is the mind-state that I refer to at any given time. These two breed the notion of ‘myself’ an ongoing accumulation of what I’ve done or what has happened to me. Sometimes ‘I’ don’t like ‘myself’ and the mind projects a range of other possibles and desirables on how my ‘self’ could be. Consciousness creates more and more possibles to get, or get away from, to become: the impulse is to act. More kamma, is created dependent on how good or bad myself seems to be.

It means we remain in the game of winning and losing, subject to the agency of cause and effect that can only bring ‘not-quite enough’ as a result. The Buddha called it ‘dukkha’, the ‘unsatisfied’ sense. ‘All that arises is of the nature of dukkha, and all that ceases is dukkha.’ That’s the nature of the game of cause and effect. But the ‘I’ sense can’t get out of the game (even with death, there is re-birth): so maybe I’m fairly okay for a while, but not completely okay – when you reflect on it, the ‘me’ sense can never be okay, because holding on to anything changeable and unstable must give rise to dukkha. We can attribute this dukkha to domestic situations or cosmic laws, but isn’t the basis of dukkha in any situation the ‘me’ sense that tags onto it? If the ‘me’ sense is not involved, things are just the way they are: the restlessness, the hurt feeling, the thirst can cease of their own accord. It is a mindful and compassionate holding of present conditions, holding past reactions and hopes and assumptions, to be with how things really are.

Contact and interpretation create kamma

Where I’ve lived for the past of couple of years, there is building work going on; the sound of electric saws and people banging and crashing. So, I have to manage this. The sound itself is doing what sound is supposed to do. Sounds have no malice in them. Yet they impinge on my mindfulness of breathing in a random and incisive way. And when they do, they get interpreted as invasive, intrusive, and agitating. What is simply a sound, becomes a perception, and the fresh kamma impulse is: ‘Let me get out of here.’ However, I watch and check my reactions, because following the agitation of the mind gives agitated results. So, I work with the perception instead; I listen to the sound and reflect on how my mind is interpreting it. Reflecting on it this way I can make the sound a meditation object, a moment at a time. Then it becomes something that is neutral, the mind can leave it alone, and there’s no need to ‘defend’ the mind against the sound.

Review attitudes and assumptions

One doesn’t hang on to contact-impressions; and any of the ‘me’ positions. The mind can open its awareness of a state, and slip into that awareness rather than inro any of the perceptions and interpretations that arise along with it. Then mind-states don’t have to arise; to that extent we’re out of the loop of kamma. Of course, not creating a state is easier said than done, and there are all kinds of triggers of kamma, but they teach us that suffering and stress only stop with letting go. So, it’s good when one has the simple opportunity to focus on having one’s buttons pushed: we can notice where the hanging on is occurring and bring a focus to that.

Say I start off with a perception that meditation that equals quiet, equals things happening in a very steady way. Although there’s a lot of truth to that idea, often we can’t start from that place, we have to start in the jungle of the heart. Our challenge is to find a wise foundation in that jungle of the heart without going into, ‘Oh I can’t, my mind’s a mess. No, no, this isn’t it. I can’t do it.’ If we set up the perception of meditation as something serene, then it’s very difficult to start meditating at all. The wise way is to begin where you are: with hindrances, defilements, past kamma, confusion, wondering how to get it right, getting it wrong – and work with being able to witness and let go of those mind-states. You find support in the simplicity of the body’s presence, or the aspiration and spacious kindness of the mind that meets these challenges. Otherwise, the mind lingers and generates a self-view: ‘I am someone who is inherently lacking in something.’ Or it might generate a view: ‘Meditation is impossible.’ Such impressions are difficult and haunting.

The trick is to cultivate non-reactive attention… mindfulness to know the mood as a mood, as a condition that arises in the mind. Whether it’s me, the way I am, past kamma, or whatever, right now it’s an impression, a perception full of felt meaning. With that understanding as a support, mindfulness and full awareness can stand apart from the mood. We can say, ‘This is the mood. Let it be what it has to be. Moods feel like this.’ It’s the same as saying, ‘Hammers and electric saws sound like this.’ A mood is not a person. It’s not something whose nature is fixed. Any fixing comes from the lingering bias of wanting to figure it out, control and change it; to be an ‘I’ who can get out of the mood, and a self who has done so.

If that bias isn’t relinquished, there is the arising of an ‘I’ who can’t control or get out of, it and this ‘I’ creates myself as a failure or whatever. So, however it operates this bias, called ‘conceit’, gives the potential ‘I am’ view its foothold: ‘I am a dumped-on being’, ‘I am an angry person’, and so on – then based upon this entity, the process continues: ‘Because I am this, well, I’ll do that’ or ‘Because I am this, I need some of that,’ and so forth. And so fresh kamma gets triggered based upon that fundamental inclination.

However, rather than generate conceit and views in our meditation, the encouragement is to attend to the confusion or passion or regret or doubt as it’s happening, so that we handle it, acknowledge its energies, its effects on the body. That disengagement from making anything out of it is what lets it pass.

Preparing the Meeting Place

This disengagement from self-view is a skill that seems modest and yet is liberating. It comes with the skill of fully meeting experience, rather than half meeting, half avoiding, or meeting it in order to do something to it or glean information, happiness, or enlightenment from it. Developing it takes time. It takes capacity as well as willingness, because our system isn’t always strong enough, clear enough, or balanced enough to meet things directly. It’s like when you’re sick, and your energies are low, the body’s not capable of carrying what it can when its healthy. And when the mind is tense, or undernourished, then it can’t handle stress so well as when it’s in balance. And sometimes it’s simply the case that an edgy mental state arises because of stressed physical condition. It’s not all inner demons!

Consequently, we need to prepare a meeting place, an awareness that can meet what arises without contracting. Doing just this is the ‘kamma that leads to the end of kamma.’ The basis of this is training in mindfulness: staying with contact without formulating a self and a reaction. This means that for a moment you cannot know how things should be, or what to do. Allow yourself this mindful uncertainty, that opens the essential space for a response rather than a reaction to arise. So, when the feeling and the impression or ‘meaning’ come up, just wait right there. Don’t work from previous models. Don’t make a ‘me’ out of it. Then hold your awareness where it subsides. This is the place where kamma can end: in that place where there’s no laying down of more residues. So, we practise handling attention, contact and volition, the will to do. And with skill in that, the world of ‘me and it’ changes by itself.

The best place to meet impressions is in mindfulness of the body. That is, if I sense the mind in terms of bodily as well as emotive results, or in terms of shifts of energy – say I feel a shrinking, or a flaring or a hardening – then that steadier meeting place has more capacity to receive rather than react than if I just take it all through the mind. The body doesn’t conceive; it doesn’t generate the ‘me’, that is the creation of the mind. Therefore, preparing the meeting place is about being embodied, staying very much with that bodily presence as we go about our lives. We already know this: we suggest someone sits down before we give them bad news; we take a deep breath before we embark on a challenge. But in Dhamma-practice we develop just this. It’s a matter of letting the entire system digest the experience, rather than the heart or head alone.

Another way in which we prepare the meeting place is in terms of the mode of attention. Attention can be reaching out to have and hold an agreeable experience. It can be contracted and withdrawn in order to minimise the impact of a disagreeable experience. ‘Now what will the next moment bring…’ The best place is to have attention aware of the space around things; so that I’m not drawn in or drawn out. Impressions don’t have to crystallise, so attention can be on the space as well as the thing, and the ‘me,’ helps the meeting to be more spacious and less impacting.

Finally, there’s volition, motivation: the ‘how’ I attend; so that the aim is for whatever is met to come to its place of rest. This ‘how’ motivates inquiry into direct experience. Then I can see when I stop making a big ‘I am’ and ‘I want’ and ‘I can’t stand this’ at the meeting place where contact and impressions arise. So kamma doesn’t keep getting created. This purity of mind is of non-attachment and non-pushing away. When the meeting place is prepared with body, heart and mind it inspires a ‘this world’ form of devotion. There is the willingness to be here and receive the uncomfortable and the frightening without tightening up around them. And in the present one can feel more spacious.

All that rests on good kamma. So, we honour the clear boundaries of morality, the present moment objectivity of mindfulness, the strength that comes from samadhi, the wisdom that comes with contemplating kamma and self. These are assets. We can benefit from developing them. And they are to be developed by working on them with the sensations and moods of our lives, from the coarse to the refined and sublime. The field of kamma is the best place to find the ending of kamma. And it’s the ending of that – the ceasing of habitual impressions and reactions – that comprises Awakening.

Ajahn Sucitto’s home page: https://ajahnsucitto.org/