Ajahn Amaro

The world is constructed and patterned by our own conditioning; the world that we experience is built up, formed and framed by the experiences of a lifetime. If we are willing to consider the possibility that the world we experience is in fact fabricated, formed by the patterns of consciousness within our minds, we will see that this is indeed true. Being able to experience the world in this way changes our relationship to it. If the world is in our mind, there isn’t really an “out there”. It’s all “in here”. It’s all known here. It’s all patterns of mental events taking place and forming within awareness. When we are able to shift perception in this way, we are able to move the flow of our thoughts and events from “out in the world”, and recognize that it all happens in here.

There is a quality of integration, a sense of wholeness, which comes with opening the mind in this way. This integration can be particularly apparent in walking meditation. There can be the feeling that “I” am walking and the world around me includes trees, birds, grass and the sky, and at night the stars and planets. But then we recollect that the world is in the mind, that it all happens here. There is no “there”. It’s all “here”. It is all known within the same sphere of consciousness, of awareness.

When you shift the perception in this way, notice how it affects you. We are able to recognize the fact that when we close our eyes, the visual world vanishes. When we open our eyes, the visual world reappears. We directly know the fact that our experience of the world is fabricated by our senses—the world that we know is all happening here, within this mind. It is known here. Through being able to see that, what we experience is a continuous flowing process, a single integrated process. This makes it easier to abide in the quality of knowing, awakened awareness. The heart receives and knows that flow of perception and experience. And along with attending to the different patterns of perception, thought, feeling, of movement, flow and change, there is also a wonderful quality of stillness.

Luang Por Chah would say that the mind is like still, flowing water. It flows insofar as its perceptions, thoughts and moods, its sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, thinking and emotions, all come and go and change. There is a continuous flow. But there is also stillness. There is that which is aware of all the mental activity of perception, of thought, of feeling—and that awareness is not going anywhere. That awareness is outside of the world of space and time. That awareness is perfectly still. It is not something which is subject to movement or change. It is the ever-present quality of knowing – the one who knows”, that which is aware.

So, your mind is like still, flowing water. There is stillness and there is movement; the two interpenetrate and permeate each other completely and without conflict. There is movement, like the body moving up and down on the walking meditation path, but that which knows the movement isn’t going anywhere. That which knows the movement is outside the realm of time and space. It is ever-present, yet it is not caught up in the movement. While you are walking, at the same time as there is the perception of the body moving, the body is walking up and down, but that which knows the body is always here. Just as in your entire life, everything you have ever known or experienced has happened through your mind—it has only ever happened here.

Throughout your life, you will always be “here”. When you were driving in your car last week, or even when you were a little baby in your hometown and didn’t think in words, you have always been “here”; there was always a “here-ness”, wherever you were. So, we bring our attention to this quality to which Ajahn Chah was referring, this quality of stillness in the still flowing water of life, this quality that is always happening “here”. This knowing quality is free from bondage to the realm of time and space. It is unlocated.

Buddhist teachings refer a lot to anicca, dukkha, anattā, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self, and how to use them as reflections to loosen the habits of attachment and identification. Those habits can be quite subtle, pervasive and strong.

The feeling of self is a particularly strong habit. So, in our practice, we emphasize the importance of clearly seeing the self-creating habits of the mind and learning how to loosen the grip on those habits; how to let them go completely and free the heart from self-view. But those bonds can be invisible as well as strong. Even when the self-creating habit is seen clearly, and even when there is a letting go of it, there can still unbeknownst to us, be a strong bondage.

Be aware that the idea: “It’s all happening here,” is not understood as everything is happening in “my” mind, the mind is creating the feeling of locatedness. The mind is attached to the notion that it is happening “here”, at this spot. It’s an attachment to the feeling of place or the feeling of location that the mind creates—the sense of “here-ness”, in this spot, this geographical centre where things are felt.

Look closely at that feeling of locatedness and the sense of things happening here, and bring to mind the word “here” or say to yourself, “It’s all happening here”. By bringing attention to it, the contrived here-ness can fall away together with a whole extra layer of letting go. Awakened awareness, knowing, is free from bondage to the realm of time and space as well. It is timeless and unlocated.

I find it is also helpful to recollect that Dhamma is essentially unlocated in the world of three-dimensional space. Location is a useful tool in the physical world but in the world of mind, location, place does not apply. Three-dimensional space only refers to the physical world, to the rūpa-khandha. Mind, the nāma-khandhā, does not have any relationship to three-dimensional space, because mind has no material substance. Mind has no physical form; therefore, three-dimensional space has no fundamental relationship to the mind.

Ask the question: “Where is the mind?” This illuminates the presumption: “It is here”. For in the clear light of awakened awareness, the wisdom faculty recognizes that even any kind of ‘hereness’ is not it either. It is important to look at all the different habits of attachment and identification, even if they are very, very subtle.

Though we may have no sense of self, it can be that that “no sense of self” is being experienced here. And that “hereness” is also to be let go of in the practice of liberation. Dhamma is absolutely real, but it’s completely unlocated. You cannot say that the Dhamma is any “where”. You might say, “But it’s everywhere!” But by looking at that whole dimension of experience it can be recognized that “whereness” does not apply. Allow that recognition to have its effect upon the citta.

Excerpted from The Breakthrough by Ajahn Amaro, Amaravati Publications, 2016.

Ajahn Amaro

With RESPECT & GRATITUDE, this text was edited from a much larger text to fit into the Dhamma Footsteps blog format.

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-021-01737-y