Excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.

[Note: We begin this excerpt with the final paragraph of the last piece on November 7, 2024. Then the text continues with the first paragraph of today’s text.]

“In the world in general, there’s a huge inheritance of psychological programs based upon violence and deprivation – and who knows where all that began. Under the pressure of desperate need and hopelessness, in a context that is starved of goodwill, or is abusive, citta can get so distorted and compressed that it only experiences relief in the blaze of rage and brutality. For example, say your father got brutalized by being in a war; this led to his bouts of depression, explosive rage and drunkenness. You picked up the results of that, were insecure and became abusive towards yourself and insensitive to others. Where and when do these cycles of violence and punishment and revenge end? Only when we can regard our own and other people’s actions empathetically in terms of cause and effect. That regard is equanimity, the most reliable base for action.”

 With these samatha resources, the citta can first meet negative qualities without reacting to them; and then insightfully question whether this or any kammic patterning is who you are. Meeting, rather than analysing or fixing, carries the intent to fully receive qualities as they are; this intent is empathetic, so the mind’s energy (which powers that saṇkhāra) feels that – and its current is changed. This stops it from creating more tracks and perceptions.

Where body and heart come together is a good meeting place. Normally, as a negative mood or a poignant memory arises, it catches hold and the heart resonates accordingly – so we become that mood, with its characteristic pattern. Being averse to all this and trying to stop it merely adds to the intensity. If you sustain the view that the way you are is because of what others have or haven’t done – that resignation closes the heart and locks the pattern into place. If you ignore the nature of your patterning by going out into sights and sounds, tastes and ideas in the present, then you may be unaware of it for a while; but when the music stops … it’s back to ‘me’ again with the mood swings and jaded self-image. Meanwhile, any acts of denial and distraction have their effects. You activate a saṇkhāra track into desolate territory.

Instead, stay with the pattern and feel it in your body. Maybe it feels constricted or numb in places; or gets agitated. This is skilful because trying to directly change your negative mind-state isn’t always the remedy – especially if the source of the problem isn’t what you’ve done, but what you’ve had done to you. If you were bullied at school, or have been discriminated against because of ethnic background or gender, your heart’s energy may well have been shaped by that. Understandable as such patterns are, any resultant defensiveness, self-affirmation or counter-attacks still don’t return the citta to its easeful or unpatterned state.

To dissolve a negative pattern, you focus on where your body feels the sense of a safe space around it – even if this is as humble as feeling the ground beneath you. Give full attention to the steadiness until that quality attracts heart-energy and your citta feels steadier. Then you can gradually draw that steadied awareness over your body. If you can link it to the rhythmic process of in- and-out breathing, that’s great, because with mindfulness, the energy of breathing can refine and suffuse any positive effect through the entire nervous system. This takes time, but the energies of passion, sourness, stagnation, restlessness and uncertainty will gradually dissolve into the stream of wholesome energy. This consolidation of awareness embeds the impulsive base of the mind in deeper currents than that of sense-contact and discursive thought. When in touch with this deep foundation, there is a firm ease that checks memories and moods from becoming overwhelming, and makes the citta ‘great’ in terms of its energetic boundaries and capacity.

In tandem with this, you attend to the mood of the mind with empathy. From this perspective, if sorrow or agitation or fear wells up, rather than re-enact old habits of feeling bereft, or of trying to figure out a solution, you silently ask: ‘How am I with this now?’ The aim is not to shift away from this topic, but to witness that topic with stable awareness so that some wise seeing can get underneath the story to the emotion. Instead, find a place where you sense ease or steadiness, and spread awareness from that place to the edges of the difficult area. To the extent to which you’ve strengthened your citta, your awareness can be onlooking and compassionate – with, but not in, the pattern. As the energy of the stuck place changes, it can begin to release; the heart can open. Then you centre in its positive current and suffuse afflicted places until the system comes into balance and feels refreshed.

Even if you’re feeling fine right now, you should bear in mind that the citta does have latent afflictive tendencies. So, it’s always a good idea to brighten and clean the mind in order to meet what arises in the day. This is basic sanity. If you go into a world of random cause and effect when you’re ill-at-ease, tense or depressed, you’re leaving yourself wide open to laying down some unskilful kamma. But with the great heart you won’t get knocked about, defensive, or reactive.

Continued next week. Please note, I’ve been offline for about two months, my old laptop gave me a problem to solve and I just couldn’t find a way through. My old friend Manish got me up and running on a new computer. Learn by doing, still a few things to puzzle over. So many small things to study, it’ll take time. Sorry I wasn’t ‘here’ for so long. I missed you! Hope everyone is well.
More later
Tiramit