nonabiding

Posted on December 28, 2023 by tiramit

Ajahn Amaro [Excerpts from “Small Boat, Great Mountain”]
One of the topics that Ajahn Chah most liked to emphasise was the principle of nonabiding. During the brief two years that I was with him in Thailand, he spoke about it many times. In various ways he tried to convey that nonabiding was the essence of the path, a basis of peace, and a doorway into the world of freedom.

The Limitations of the Conditioned Mind

During the summer of 1981, Ajahn Chah gave a very significant teaching to Ajahn Sumedho on the liberating quality of nonabiding. Ajahn Sumedho had been in England for a few years when a letter arrived from Thailand. Even though Ajahn Chah could read and write, he rarely did. In fact, he hardly wrote anything, and he never wrote letters. The message began with a note from a fellow Western monk. It said: “Well, Ajahn Sumedho, you are not going to believe this, but Luang Por decided he wanted to write you a letter, so he asked me to take his dictation.” The message from Ajahn Chah was very brief, and this is what it said: “Whenever you have feelings of love or hate for anything whatsoever, these will be your aides and partners in building pārami (perfection of core virtues, including: honesty, generosity, proper conduct, etc). The Buddha-Dharma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This, Sumedho, is your place of nonabiding.”

A few weeks later, Ajahn Chah had a stroke and became unable to speak, walk, or move. His verbal teaching career was over. This letter contained his final instructions.

During my time at his monastery in Thailand, Ajahn Chah would sit on a wicker bench in the open area underneath his hut and receive visitors from ten o’clock in the morning until late at night. Every day. Sometimes until two or three in the morning.

Amongst the many ways in which he would convey the teachings, Ajahn Chah would put various conundrums out to the listeners, queries or puzzles designed to frustrate and then break through the limitations of the conditioned mind. He would ask such questions as: “Is this stick long or short?” “Where did you come from and where are you going?” Or, as here, “If you can’t go forwards and you can’t go back and you can’t stand still, where do you go?” And when he’d put forth these questions, he’d have a look on his face like a cobra.

Some of the more courageous responders would try a reasonable answer:

“Go to the side?”

“Nope, can’t go to the side either.”

“Up or down?” “He would keep pushing people as they struggled to come up with a “right” answer. The more creative or clever they got, the more he would make them squirm: “No, no! That’s not it.”

Ajahn Chah was trying to push his inquirers up against the limitations of the conditioned mind, in hopes of opening up a space for the unconditioned to shine through. The principle of nonabiding is exceedingly frustrating to the conceptual/thinking mind, because that mind has built up such an edifice out of “me” and “you,” out of “here” and “there,” out of “past” and “future,” and out of “this” and “that.”

As long as we conceive reality in terms of self and time, as a “me” who is someplace and can go some other place, then we are not realising that going forwards, going backwards, and standing still are all entirely dependent upon the relative truths “of self, locality, and time. In terms of physical reality, there is a coming and going. But there’s also that place of transcendence where there is no coming or going. Think about it. Where can we truly go? Do we ever really go anywhere? Wherever we go we are always “here,” right? To resolve the question, “Where can you go?” we have to let go—let go of self, let go of time, let go of place. In that abandonment of self, time, and place, all questions are resolved.

Ancient Teachings on Nonabiding

This principle of nonabiding is also contained within the ancient Theravāda teachings. It wasn’t just Ajahn Chah’s personal insight or the legacy of some stray Nyingmapa lama who wandered over the mountains and fetched up in northeast Thailand 100 years ago. Right in the Pali Canon, the Buddha points directly to this. In the Udāna (the collection of “Inspired Utterances” of the Buddha), he says:

There is that sphere of being where there is no earth, no water, no fire, nor wind; no experience of infinity of space, of infinity of consciousness, of no-thingness, or even of neither-perception-nor-non-perception; here there is neither this world nor another world, neither moon nor sun; this sphere of being I call neither a coming nor a going nor a staying still, neither a dying nor a reappearance; it has no basis, no evolution, and no support: it is the end of dukkha. (UD. 8.1)

Rigpa, nondual awareness, is the direct knowing of this. It’s the quality of mind that knows, while abiding nowhere.
There is also the Bahiya Sutta:

“In the seen, there is only the seen,
in the heard, there is only the heard,
in the sensed, there is only the sensed,
in the cognized, there is only the cognized.
Thus you should see that indeed there is no thing here;
this, Bāhiya, is how you should train yourself.

Since, Bāhiya, there is for you
in the seen, only the seen,
in the heard, only the heard,
in the sensed, only the sensed,
in the cognized, only the cognized,
and you see that there is no thing here,
you will therefore see that
indeed there is no thing there.

As you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,
nor in any place
betwixt the two.

This alone is the end of suffering.” (UD. 1.10)

“Where” Does Not Apply

What does it mean to say, “There is no thing there”? It is talking about the realm of the object; it implies that we recognise that “the seen is merely the seen.” That’s it. There are forms, shapes, colours, and so forth, but there is no thing there. There is no real substance, no solidity, and no self-existent reality. All there is, is the quality of experience itself. No more, no less. There is just seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, cognizing. And the mind naming it all is also just another experience: “the space of the Dharma hall I’m in,” “Ajahn Amaro’s voice,” “here is the thought, ‘Am I understanding this?’ Now another thought, ‘Am I not understanding this?’”

There is what is seen, heard, tasted, and so on, but there is no thing-ness, no solid, independent entity that this experience “refers to.

As this insight matures, not only do we realize that there is no thing “out there,” but we also realize there is no solid thing “in here,” no independent and fixed entity that is the experiencer. This is talking about the realm of the subject.

The practice of nonabiding is a process of emptying out the objective and subjective domains, truly seeing that both the object and subject are intrinsically empty. If we can see that both the subjective and objective are empty, if there’s no real “in here” or “out there,” where could the feeling of I-ness and meness and my-ness locate itself? As the Buddha said to Bāhiya, “You will not be able to find your self either in the world of this [subject] or in the world of that [object] or anywhere between the two.
Continued next week, Jan/04/ 24
Source of Ajahn Amaro’s text: https://www.abhayagiri.org/media/books/amaro_small_boat_great_mountain.pdf

Image: USGS United States Geological Survey, The Lena River Delta Russia

what Is a living being?

Posted on December 21, 2023 by tiramit

[Two articles by Ajahn Amaro discussing the Buddhist meaning of Rebirth and related truths]
In the Theravāda Buddhist world, the Sutta on Loving- Kindness is one of the best known, best loved, and most often recited of the Buddha’s discourses.

Wishing: In gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born,

May all beings be at ease!

By not holding to fixed views,

The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.

Notice the seamless flow of ideas, a deeply inspiring sentiment, until the last four lines of the sutta, which present a very different message: the notion of not being born again. We don’t really think in terms of birth and death in the Western Buddhist world, We may have a vague idea that after death something might happen, but we’re not quite sure what and most of us don’t seem to care very much. Our main concern is getting on with our practice, which is all well and good, but even this important focus is not the culmination. So, it can be useful to take a step back and consider our cultural conditioning and how that has an impact on our understanding of what it means “not to be reborn.”

The Process of Rebirth

When we talk about being born again, what we’re talking about is that moment when the clinging strikes and the heart gets caught and is carried away. The verse at the end of the Mettā Sutta encourages us to let go of clinging and thus not be born again. Not being born again is like the consummation of pure love or rigpa. We don’t get identified with any aspect of the internal, external, psychological, or material worlds of our bodies, thoughts, feelings, emotions, Buddha-fields, or whatever. As soon as there is that formulation, that crystallization, there’s birth. What are the four kinds of clinging? They are
clinging to sense pleasure; clinging to views and opinions;
clinging to conventions, to gurus, to meditation techniques, to an ethic, to specific religious forms;
and clinging to the idea of self.

The last four lines of the Loving- Kindness (mettā) Sutta are about the ending of clinging:

By not holding to fixed views (ditthupādāna),
the pure-hearted one, by not clinging to virtues, to ethics, to rules, to forms),
having clarity of vision (this has to do with clinging to self, attavādupādāna),
being freed from all sense[…] desires (kāmupādāna),
is not born again into this world (as the clinging stops, so does being born again).

[Note: In the following article Ajahn Amaro explores two kinds of truth, when he stayed at Ajahn Chah’s monastery, as a young monk]

Conventional Truth & Ultimate Truth

The longer I stayed there, the more I began to pay attention to Ajahn Chah’s repeated emphasis on the relationship between convention and liberation, conventional reality and ultimate reality. The things of this world are merely conventions of our own creation. Once we establish them, we proceed to get lost in or blinded by them. This gives rise to confusion, difficulty, and struggle. One of the great challenges of spiritual practice is to create the conventions, pick them up, and use them without confusion. We can recite the Buddha’s name, bow, chant, follow techniques and routines, pick up all these attributes of being a Buddhist, and then, without any hypocrisy, also recognise that everything is totally empty. There is no Buddhist! This is something Ajahn Chah focused on a great deal over the years: if you think you really are a Buddhist, you are totally lost. He would sometimes be sitting up on the Dharma seat, giving a talk to the whole assembly of monastics and laypeople, and say, “There are no monks or nuns here, there are no lay people, no women or men—these are all merely empty conventions that we create.

The capacity we have to commit ourselves sincerely to something and simultaneously to see through it is something we find difficult to exercise in the West. Either we grab onto something and identify with it or we think it is meaningless and reject it, since it’s not real anyway. So, the Middle Way is not necessarily a comfortable one for us. The Middle Way is the simultaneous holding of the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, and seeing that the one does not contradict or belie the other.

What Is a Living Being?

A certain amount of spiritual maturity hinges on understanding the nature of conventional reality. So much of our conditioning is predicated on the assumption that there is such a thing as a “real” living being. We see ourselves in terms of the limitations of the body and the personality, and we define what we are within those bounds. We assume then that other beings are also limited little pockets of beingness that float around in the cosmos. But a lot of what the practice is doing is deconstructing that model. Rather than taking the body and personality as the defining features of what we are, we take the Dharma as the basic reference point of what we are. (Or, if you like using the Vajrayāna language, you take the Dharmakāya as the basic reference point.) Then we see the body and personality as being merely minuscule subsets of that, and as a result, we relate to our own nature in a very different way. The body and personality are recognised as little windows that the Dharma-nature is filtered through.

Through the matrix of the body, personality, and our mental faculties, that nature of reality can be realised; it is not some little thing that is tacked on at the edge. Within all Buddhist traditions, understanding what a living being is means revisioning that whole structure, the habitual image of what we are. It’s quite a common expression in the Mahāyāna Buddhist world (for instance in the Vajra Sutra) for the teachings to say such things as, “‘Living beings are numberless, I vow to save them all.’ And how do you save all living beings? You realize that there are no living beings. That is how you save living beings.” But does saying that there aren’t any beings mean that they don’t exist? We can’t quite say that either. A true understanding of this expression means we are seeing beyond the normal limitations of the senses.

Where Are We?

You can practice understanding the experience of limitation. Try taking out the physical element of what you are and just look at yourself in terms of mind. You will find that the whole quality of boundary breaks up, as does the idea of “where I am” and “and “where other people are.” You will see that the body, its location, and three-dimensional space only apply to rūpa-khandha— only to the world of material form. In fact, “inside” and “outside,” “here” and “there,” “space” and “spatial relations” only apply to form; they do not apply to mind. Mind does not exist in space. Three-dimensional space exists only in relationship to the world of physical form.

That’s why meditating with our eyes open is a good test. It seems that there are separate bodies out there. There’s one here, there’s one there. With our eyes closed, it’s easier to get a feeling of unity. The material form is giving us the clue of separateness, but that separateness is entirely dependent on the material world. In terms of mind, place does not apply. The mind is not anywhere. We are here, but we are not here. Those limitations of separate identities are conventions that have a relative but not an absolute value.

We create the illusion of separateness and individuality through our belief in the sense world. When we start to let go of the sense world, particularly the way we relate to physical form, then we start being able to expand the vision of what we are as beings. It’s not even a matter of seeing how we overlap with other beings; it’s a matter of realising that we are of a piece with other beings.

The Middle Way

Meditation is a special kind of dance in which we commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the practice of deconstructing the materialistic view of reality. The challenge is simultaneously to hold on and to let go; it is to see clearly what we are doing and at the same time see through it. To do this, it’s important to cultivate a feeling for the Middle Way. This is the balance point. The Middle Way is not just halfway between two extremes—it’s not a 50-50 kind of thing. It’s more like saying [holds the bell striker vertically and moves the lower end to the left] existence is over here and nonexistence is over here [moves the lower end to the right]. The Middle Way is the hinge-point at the top where the two pivot, rather than the lower end of the striker just being halfway along its arc. It’s actually the source from which the two emanate. This is just one way of describing it.

Some people may be familiar with Tibetan practice, others more familiar with Theravāda and vipassanā practice. The questions often arise: “How do we mesh the two? Can we? Should we?” If we are looking to align the different methodologies, we can get really tangled up and confused, because this one says do this and the other one says do that. I therefore encourage everyone to recognise that every technique, every form of expression is just a convention that we’re picking up and using for a single goal: to transcend suffering and to be liberated. That’s what any technique points us toward.

The way to know if what we are doing is worthwhile is to ask, “Does this lead to the end of suffering or does it not?” If it does, continue. If it does not, we need to switch our attention to what will. We can simply ask ourselves, “Am I experiencing dukkha? Is there a feeling of alienation or difficulty?” If there is, it means that we are clinging or hanging on to something. We need to see that the heart is attached somewhere and then make the gesture to loosen up, to let go. Sometimes we don’t notice where the suffering gets generated. We get so used to doing things in a particular way that we take it as a standard. But in meditation, we challenge the status quo. We investigate where there is a feeling of “dis-ease” and look to see what’s causing it. By stepping back and scanning the inner domain, it’s possible to find out where the attachment is and what’s causing it. Ajahn Chah would say, “If you have an itch on your leg, you don’t scratch your ear.” In other words, go to where the dukkha is, no matter how subtle it may be; notice it and let go. That’s how we allow the dukkha to disperse. This is how we will know whether the practices we are doing are effective or not.

My suggestions and recommendations on how to understand ultimate and conventional reality are not anything you need to believe in. Buddhist teachings are always put out as themes for us to contemplate. You need to find out for yourself if what I’m saying makes sense or rings true. Don’t worry if you’re getting contradicting instructions. Do your best not to spend too much energy or attention getting everything to match. Otherwise, you’ll just stay confused. The fact is, things in life don’t match. You can’t align all the loose ends. But you can go to the place where they come from.

Link to the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha’s Words on Loving-Kindness:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.08.amar.html

Link to the source of Ajahn Amaro’s articles: https://www.abhayagiri.org/media/books/amaro_small_boat_great_mountain.pdf

off the wheel: follow-up

Posted on December 14, 2023 by tiramit

[Excerpts from a chapter in “Small Boat, Great Mountain” by Ajahn Amaro. This is about the Buddha’s Dependent Origination cycle, if you’re new to the subject, please take a look at last week’s post and the one before that.]

Exit Points from the Cycle

We don’t need to look very far to see the dependent origination pattern in our everyday lives. We can see how over and over again the cycle is enacted in our being, moment after moment, hour after hour, day after day. We get caught in things we love, things we hate, things we have opinions about, in feelings about ourselves, feelings about others, in liking, disliking, hoping, fearing. It goes on and on. The good news is that there are several different places where we can catch this cycle and ultimately free the heart.

One could do a month-long workshop on dependent origination and not exhaust it. So, I will just give a few of the key points here. Let’s say the worst has happened. Something very painful has taken place. We’ve come to be surrounded by broken glass. We’ve had an argument with someone. We took something that wasn’t ours. We were selfish or greedy. Someone has hurt us. How did we get ourselves into this mess? This is life. We are experiencing the anguish of dukkha. But we don’t need to feel like a victim or fly into a “Why me?” tantrum.

One of the Buddha’s most beautiful teachings is that the experience of suffering can go in two directions. One, it can compound our misery and confusion. Two, it can ripen in search. When everything has gone wrong, we have a choice. Do we just wallow? Or do we say: “Why is it like this? What am I doing to make this a problem?” The search kicks in, to find where we are clinging and why we are looking for happiness where it cannot be found. (A 6.63)

Even at the birth, ageing, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair end of the cycle, we can use that pain as the cause to help us wake up. Actually, the Buddha points out in some of his teachings that the very experience of dukkha can cause faith to come into existence. (S 12.23) The pain is saying: “This really hurts. But somehow, I know that this is not the ultimate reality.” We also know that “I can do something about this; it’s up to me.” So, the faith that something is doable arises, and that faith is what launches us on the path of transcendence.

Another place to investigate is at the link between feeling and craving, between vedanā and tanha. Tanha literally means “thirst.” Often it is translated as “desire,” but there are wholesome desires as well as unwholesome ones. That’s why craving is a much better word. It has an intrinsic agitated, frantic, “me, me, me” element to it. Feeling is a world of innocence. We can have an intensely blissful, exciting, pleasant feeling. We can have an extremely painful feeling. We can have a fuzzy, neutral feeling through the body or the mind. Feeling by itself is utterly innocent. There is no intrinsic positive or negative quality to it at all. If there’s sufficient awareness, then all mental and sense phenomena, and the pleasant, painful, or neutral feelings associated with them, can be known, without clinging, as appearances. As soon as ignorance, marigpa, enters the picture, the heart begins to crave: if it’s beautiful, “I want it.” If it’s ugly, “Get it out of here; it stinks.” Somewhere between these two we will generally create an opinion about it. This is a point in meditation where we can clearly cut the cycle, where we can avoid getting reborn, where we can stay with the quality of the wholeness of the Dharma. There is feeling, sight, smell, taste, and touch, and we recognize the emotions that go along with them, but it’s just the world of feeling—pure and innocent.

The last part of the pattern I want to discuss is actually at the beginning of the story, at the very start of the dependent origination cycle: Avijjā paccayā sankhārā, ignorance conditions formations. In other words, ignorance complicates everything. What does this mean? Sankhāra is a broad term that fundamentally means “that which is compounded,” and it gets translated many ways: karmic formations, concoctions, fabrications, volitional formations, subject/object duality—there’s a large constellation of meanings.

What this phrase, “Ignorance complicates everything,” is saying is that as soon as there is avijjā, as soon as rigpa is lost, then instantly the seeds of duality start to form and sprout. There’s an observer and an observed; there is a this and a that; a here and a there; a me and a world. Even at its most subtle, germinal stage, this is what it is talking about. As soon as there is avijjā, sankhāra is caused to be there. Then it becomes a vortex; the tiniest little movement and it starts to grow, to spiral out. Sankhārā paccayā viññanam: sankhāra conditions consciousness. Consciousness conditions mind and body. Mind and body conditions the six senses. The six senses condition feeling, craving, and so on.

By the time we get down to the six senses, there is the body here and there’s the world out there, and we experience them as apparently solid realities.

If it’s only just started to head down the line, it’s a matter of quickly catching it. We can step back and see where an observer and an observed have already been created. As it is said, “Sankhāra sticks its head out” like a tortoise—meaning some form is trying to poke its head into rigpa. But if 80 percent of the rigpa, the knowing, is there, we can still catch it and come back to rest in that open awareness.

We are talking about the subtle area of movement where, as soon as there is a slippage of mindfulness or the faintest coloration or distortion of that awareness, duality kicks in. And that’s the seed of the whole thing. If it’s seen at that point and not followed, then that seed, that primal movement, will not grow further, it will cease right there. If it’s not seen, the vortex will build and build until there is “me in here, the world out there.” And then: “I want it, I can’t stand it, I’ve got to have it. How marvellous, how wonderful, I am going places”—sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair.

Endless Hunger

What happens at that latter end of the cycle, when the dukkha hasn’t ripened in the search for truth and we’ve let our misery get compounded? We feel incomplete. There’s “me” feeling unhappy, miserable, insecure, incomplete, alienated. Then as soon as there’s an idea or a feeling or an emotion or a sense object that might possibly make us feel complete again, we jump on it. “Well, that looks interesting. Perhaps this will do the trick.” There is a feeling of hunger, a lack, or a longing that comes from the experience of suffering. If we are not awake to what’s going on, we think that what we lack is some ‘thing’—the new job, the new car, the new partner. Or we lack perfect health. We lack a decent meditation practice. We shouldn’t be hanging out with the Tibetan lamas; we should join the Theravādins at Abhayagiri. We should rejoin the Christians. We should move to Hawaii. It goes on and on. We go after any kind of external object or internal program to find the missing piece.

This is the cycle of addiction, and it is a very common experience. I am sure everyone has had such experiences. In spite of our best intentions, we find ourselves back in trouble again. We see that we have pursued some kind of desire—for a job, a partner, a meditation technique, a teacher, a car, something to satisfy us. Then we get it and believe, “Ah, this is great.” But is it really?

That something is going to make us happy and make things so completely better. And to a certain extent it does, no question about it. There is gratification for a while. That feeling is definitely there and it is real. The mind contracts around it and at that moment of “Yes!” we are absolutely gratified. The universe has shrunk to that one minuscule zone: “Me happy. Got nice thing.” The trouble is that the universe is not actually that small. We can only hold it together while the thrill lasts. We taste delicious food, we have an inspiring retreat, we see an exciting movie, we enjoy the smell of a new car, and then it’s gone. These objects don’t satisfy us anymore. The place where the piece was missing opens up again and there is dukkha once more. If we don’t realize what is happening, we seek another object to fill that gap, and the cycle of rebirth goes around and around, again and again. It happens thousands of times a day.

Map the process out for yourself. Take notes. You’ll see that it happens very quickly. Ajahn Chah used to say that following dependent origination is like dropping out of a tree and trying to count the branches on the way down. It’s that quick. The whole process can play out from beginning to end in a second and a half. Pow. We can hardly track what’s happening but—thump! —we know it hurts when we hit the ground. We can see the urge to cling in any moment. When we see this clearly, when we have made it deeply familiar to us, we can stop the process and let go of the cycle of birth and death.

To encourage this familiarisation and relinquishment it’s important to experience and acknowledge the disadvantages of cyclic existence. Above all, it hurts. Just as the thrill is real, so is the pain. We don’t get the thrill without the pain. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? When the pain comes, we see that it is empty. When the thrill comes, we experience it as absolutely real. You’ve got to be really quick on your feet to pull that one off. There are a lot of people trying it, that’s for sure. As the pleasure is rising, we feel “real, real, happy, happy, happy, happy.” As the pleasant feelings diminish, we try to see that the pain and disappointment is “empty, empty, empty, empty.” As we say in California, “Dream on.” Life is not that way.

Header image by Dan Meyers: This is a lava tunnel created by a volcano near Bend, Oregon.It gets very dark and cold and goes for a mile.

off the wheel, part two

Posted on December 7, 2023 by tiramit

With Gratitude and Respect, this is the second part of a a summary of “Off the Wheel”, by Ajahn Amaro in 2021.

In Thailand last century, there was a very prominent writer, thinker, and teacher named Ajahn Buddhadasa. He emphasized that the way to make the teaching on dependent origination really useful is to understand it and apply it to our everyday life, our moment-by-moment experience. The Buddha’s teaching is essentially practical, so pointing to the use of this teaching here and now, discovering how it can help us here in this very lifetime, is much more pertinent than talking about its relevance in past lives or future lives. Ajahn Buddhadasa confined his teachings of dependent origination to how it describes the arising of dukkha here and now, how it comes into being in our present experience.

So, how can we be free of the addiction to becoming? The cycle of becoming bhavacakka is our drug of choice to which we are all habituated, whether it is ‘becoming’ based on sense-pleasure, or becoming born of noble aspirations or caring for our family. The objects of becoming can vary from those which are reasonably wholesome to those which are downright destructive, but the process works in exactly the same way irrespective of the object, and if we don’t understand how it works, we are inevitably trapped in that endless cycle of addiction. The Buddha’s teaching helps us to recognize that trap and to break free from it.

The first exit point is at the point of dukkha itself. You’ve already arrived. You’ve woken up. You find yourself barefoot, surrounded by broken glass, thinking, “How did I get into this?” The Buddha said (A 6.63) that suffering, dukkha, ripens in two ways: it either ripens in further suffering, in which case you just keep repeating the cycles over and over again, or you ask yourself: “How did this happen? I said I wasn’t going to get caught in this again, but here I am —there has to be an alternative.”

There is a feeling, an intuition in the heart of that other way. At some level you realize that freedom from addiction must be a possibility. And that very intuition is what the Buddha refers to as faith, saddha. This is how suffering can be a cause for the arising of faith that addiction and endless suffering can’t be the only possibility. There has to be an alternative, and even if you haven’t figured out what the alternative is or how to find it, something in the heart is saying that this is how to find the way to become free of dukkha. So, the suffering you experience is a cause for the arising of faith, and that faith is a cause for a sense of delight or gladness—the potential that this addictive habit can be broken. This brings about a relaxation, a calming of the body and the mind arrives at a quality of sukha, happiness or contentment.

When the heart is content and at ease, it is natural for the mind to focus on the present moment. When there is sukha, it becomes a basis for samādhi. Samādhi is then a cause for the arising of insight. The knowledge and vision of the way things are, leads to letting go, non-attachment. The heart sees that everything is impermanent, empty, and not self. Habits of attachment and identification are relinquished. That letting go leads to freedom and to full enlightenment, full liberation.

Another point where we can exit the cycle. is the link between feeling and craving, between vedanā and taṇhā. Most meditation teachers refer to this as the weakest link in the cycle. – there can be a clear and unconfused mindfulness with regard to feelings, whether pleasant, painful, or neutral. Where it all goes wrong is when the mind buys into those feelings, trying to get rid of a painful feeling, grasps hold of a pleasant feeling, or actively ignores a neutral feeling. That’s when the confusion really kicks in and there is craving, clinging, and becoming.

Before it develops to this stage, the realm of feeling, as it is, can be the easiest point at which to break the cycle; you see there is a pleasant feeling, you see there is a painful feeling, you see there is a neutral feeling; but the heart is not ensnared by the feeling, not caught in it. Be aware that the mind is always drawn beyond the feeling, adding on to it all the shoulds and shouldn’ts, and chasing after how it ought to be—being caught up in the follow-up to a feeling.

This practice is all about working with the feeling that is actually present; for example, somebody comes to you, very upset about something and is asking you to fix it. Your habitual reaction is to feel you should do something. But if instead you say to yourself, “This is the feeling of someone-is-upset-and-asking-me-to-fix-it—that is what this is,” in a strange and mysterious way, you enable yourself to attune more completely to what is actually present. Out of that attunement, what is appropriate and helpful for the situation can arise. If we are busy trying to figure things out or just reacting from memory and hoping to sort things out without reflecting, we don’t notice that we’re already caught up in the experience, we haven’t noticed our own conceptual proliferations, and therefore our response is skewed. This is a helpful practice, you can use it any time—when you’re queuing for food, feeling the standing-in-the-queue-at-lunchtime-trying-not-to-think-about-that-last-piece-of-cake feeling; or reading a book and feeling the I-wonder-if-I’m-almost-at-the-end-of-the- chapter feeling.

We bring attention to the actuality of what is present, and taking the trouble to do that opens up to us a huge amount of psychological space that is always present and always available. Often, though, we are unaware of that spaciousness because we get drawn into trying to fix things—either trying to grab hold or take advantage of a pleasant situation or trying to fend off or get away from a difficult or painful situation. But if we simply bring our attention to what is here, what is present, then we are able to employ the qualities of mindfulness and wisdom.

One of the disciples of Luang Por Dun asked him if he still experienced anger. Luang Por Dun answered that the anger was there, but he didn’t accept it. He gave this answer in a very matter-of-fact way. It was as if he was saying that anger was there, but there was no place for it to land. The delivery arrives, but he doesn’t sign for it, so it’s returned to sender. The feeling of aversion and negativity can be there, but there’s no place for it to land, there’s nothing for it to hang on to. The feeling of aversion or anger arrives at the door, but there’s nobody to sign for the delivery. So it does not give rise to any kind of unwholesome action or speech.

This is why the meditation upon feeling is a very helpful practice. Just try to stay in the realm of feeling and watch as feeling tries to drift toward craving. There’s a big difference between liking and wanting, or not liking and hating. They’re not the same things. We can hear something or feel something that we do not like; we can recognize that we do not like it—it is an ugly sound or a painful feeling—but we don’t have to contend against it. We don’t have to hate it. Liking or disliking can be completely peaceful. But as soon as they transmute into wanting or hating, there is a distortion. You can’t be peaceful and hate at the same time. That doesn’t work. But if there is an ache or a pain in the body, you can dislike it but still be at peace with it. There can be a clarity: “Ouch, I don’t like that.” But no contention arises against it, no hatred toward it. That is a prime opportunity and an important area of the practice to develop. In feeling there is no intrinsic confusion or alienation. There can be a complete and comprehensive quality of clarity and peacefulness in relationship to feeling.

The last exit point from the bhavacakka, which I’ll just mention very briefly, is not to let the whole thing begin in the first place. As the mind is trying to drift into avijjā, ignorance, notice that. When mindfulness starts to slip, don’t allow avijjā to come into being. Don’t let that dulling or obscuration arise.

This is something to practice when the mind is very clear and awake in meditation. You can see the mind being drawn toward a sound or a memory or a feeling—it is almost like a tugging at your body or your clothes. You can feel the mind being drawn into wanting to attach to this, wanting to have an opinion about that or to remember this, or to absorb into a like or a dislike. Don’t let that happen. Don’t let that complication arise. Just stay with the quality of vijjā—awakened awareness, knowing. Be that very knowing. Watch those urges. Be aware of the mind trying to lurch toward an opinion or a memory or a sound, lurching toward avijjā. And then, having seen that, calmly say “No”—do not allow that ignorance to arise. This is the most subtle but also the primary and most complete way of breaking the cycle—not to let the cycle arise in the first place.