uncontracted awareness

Posted on June 28, 2025 by tiramit

Selected excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma: by Ajahn Sucitto”
Editor’s note: You have reached the end of the text. Please let me know how you feel about reading these words over the weeks and months that have passed. Thank you. All that remains now is Ajahn’s final meditation guidance.

Meditation

Come into embodied awareness, centring on the upright axis of the body as it breathes in and breathes out. By connecting your attention to the rhythm, speed and time span of the breath, come into embodied time.

As awareness gets centred in your bodily presence, widen its span. Extend awareness through the body to its edges. These will be defined by the contact with the ground beneath you, the clothes that wrap you, the space above your head, or the air that meets your skin. Establish that wide focus, referring to these contact points, until the wide focus becomes sustainable. You may also find it helpful to connect to your breathing and imagine that flow extending slowly in all directions as you breathe out, and being drawn in from the space around you as you breathe in. As your embodied awareness gradually unfolds, linger in it and savour it. At some point it will settle into the uncontracted state – the norm of meditation.

Contemplate and be aware of – but not involved with – the changing energies within that field of embodied awareness. From time to time, you might benefit from lingering in the centre of that field, taking in the quality of ease or stability. When awareness does feels settled and full, linger in it and bring it to the felt edge of your body. It will extend beyond those edges, permeating that wide area.

Disturbances will arise. These may be a reaction to a sound, or connected to an unpleasant physical feeling Feel your awareness ripple or contract at the edge of that disturbance. Maybe things start to speed up, or there are pushes to overcome or get away from the source of the disturbance. Acknowledge what is going on, and relax the responses that are attempting to deal with the disturbance. Instead, just be with, but not in, the disturbance – as if you are sitting, standing or walking beside it. Relax the edge of resistance to the disturbance, so that your awareness spreads over it – and while encompassing the disturbance, touches into a space beyond it. Contemplate the effect of that. How, for example, does this affect the sense of your body?

From time to time, mental disturbances will occur. These may be linked to something sensory, such as a sound in the next room. Or they may be purely mental – thoughts about things you have to do, or a happy memory, or a doubt, or a plan, or an intriguing puzzle that seems to ask you to get involved with it. While resisting the urge to go into any of these impressions, acknowledge the rippling or agitating effect, and how its speed and energy contrasts with the more agreeable calm state. But don’t react or be in a hurry to change anything. Instead, soften your attitude to the agitation and its energy. Put aside comparing it with what you’d prefer to be experiencing. Find the edge of the agitation, meet it and widen your awareness over it and beyond. It’s like drawing a blanket over your body and smoothing it out over a very large bed that you’re lying on. Where is the edge of that bed? Can you smooth and spread your awareness until there are no hard edges or boundaries?

If such a practice seems manageable and helpful, you can subsequently bring to mind the notion of your self. That is, the conglomerate of your concerns, plans, duties, ideas and memories. Don’t focus or go into any one of these, but as if you’re listening to a gathering of people conversing, and occasionally laughing or arguing, widen your awareness to include it all. It might be helpful to summarise this totality or field as: ‘a business meeting’; or ‘a critical audience commenting on the show’; or ‘a noisy classroom’; or ‘a city street in the middle of the day’; or ‘a farmyard’; or ‘an open beach with the occasional gull’ – and so on. Extend your awareness over that total field of self and, without losing touch with it, find the quiet place beyond its edges. Contemplate the effect of that. What attitudes, for example, arise in the uncontracted state?

As you find a way of being with, but not in, yourself, ask if there’s anything you wish you would be. Be accurate, and acknowledge it – whether it’s ‘more vigorous’, ‘unburdened’, ‘admired’, ‘effective’ or ‘compassionate’, for example. (Of course, there may be a mixture, but select one that sums them all up, or seems to have the priority.) What ripple or effect does that send across the field of self? There may be a bodily change – such as a flush in the chest or face. The mental aspect may sharpen or unify. How would you name that firmed-up effect? ‘Vibrant?’ ‘Wider?’ ‘Richer?’ ‘Lighter?’ Give attention to that effect – not the details of the wish – and widen as before, until your awareness rests in an extended and inclusive state. Stay with that, letting the details of the wish fade, but attuning to the tone and the breadth of awareness.

As another exercise, imagine what you feel you can’t be. You might, for example, compare your current condition with a better one. Or you might compare yourself with another who you see as ‘better’ or more advantaged than yourself. Once you get the sense of how that affects your field of self in terms of mental or bodily effects, extend your awareness over it and beyond. Regard the field of self with that uncontracted awareness: is there an attitude that arises, by itself? And how does that affect the self?

Eventually the impression of the other and the ripple of your response to them may merge. Extend awareness over that, letting all of this soften –and even fade.

When you feel it’s time to leave the meditation, wait; sense the energy of that intention. Widen your awareness over that arising intention. Contemplate and open to the sense of ‘end of that’ or ‘and now, I’m going to …’ Let those impressions be felt within awareness, so that they don’t dominate it. Then incline to the centre of the embodied state, and the flow of breathing. When you can keep your intention within that uncontracted norm, gradually open to the space around you, the sounds and eventually the visual field.

As a reminder, the exercises around the sense of self may well be the most stirring – so fully establish the practice with reference to the body over a few meditation periods before going further (if you choose to do so). Also bear in mind that the accuracy of how you report on your wishes, your feeling of incapacity, or your responses to another, is not meant to be clinical or an ultimate statement of who you are. That ‘felt sense’ is just an impression in the present; your practice is not about analysing it – or adjusting it. Relate to it (even picture it) as if it were a creature emerging out of the field of awareness – to be given open regard. It will appreciate that – and may respond, or change. Be the awareness of all of that.

As you learn from any of these exercises, you can practise with the self/other comparisons that arise in the day-to-day presence of other people’s appearance or behaviour.

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Glossary

In the list below, the English words used to render Buddhist terminology are followed by their Pali equivalents and alternative English renditions.

absorption: jhāna

action: kamma – cause; karma

appreciative joy: muditā – sympathetic joy; appreciation

attention: manasikāra

becoming: bhava – being; existence

bodily formation: kāya-saṇkhāra –

body-fabrication; embodied program

body: kāya

bringing to mind: vitakka – directed thought; initial thought; thinking

calming: samatha – tranquillity

cause and effect: kamma-vipāka

compassion: karuṇā

concentration/unification: samādhi

concern: ottappa – fear of blame

conscience: hiri – shame

consciousness: viññāṇa

contact/impression: phassa

deep attention: yoniso manasikāra – wise attention; careful

attention; appropriate attention; systematic attention

discernment/wisdom: paññā – wisdom

designation-contact: adhivacana-phassa

disengagement: viveka – seclusion; withdrawal;

non-attachment; detachment

dispassion: virāga – fading; detachment

distortions: vipallāsā

disturbance-contact: paṭigha-phassa – resistance impression

divine abidings: brahmavihāra

ease: sukha – happiness; pleasure

effect: vipāka – result; old kamma

empathy: anukampa – compassion; sympathy

ethics/virtue morality: sīla

equanimity: upekkhā

evaluation: vicāra – sustained thought; pondering; considering

exploration of qualities: dhammavicāya –

investigation of phenomena

factors of awakening: bojjhanga – factors of Enlightenment

felt meanings: saññā – perception

full knowing: sampajañña – clear comprehension

gladness: pamojjha

heart/mind/awareness: citta – mind; heart

ignorance: avijjā – unknowing

insight: vipassanā

intention/volition/impulse: cetanā

latent tendencies: anusaya – obsessions

life-force: āyusaṇkhāra

loving-kindness: mettā – kindness; good will; friendliness

mental/emotional formation: citta-saṇkhāra –

mental fabrication; affect-response program

mindfulness: sati

mindfulness of breathing: ānāpānasati

mind/mind-organ: manas – mind; intellect

motivation: chanda – desire; interest

name/interpretation: nāma – mentality; name

outflows: āsavā – influx; taints; effluents; cankers

pattern/s (i.e. acquired or resultant): saṇkhāra/ā – formation/s;

mental formation/s; volitional formation/s; fabrication/s

passion: rāga – lust

perfections: pāramī/pāramitā

program/s (i.e. active): saṇkhāra/ā – formations;

mental formations; volitional formations; fabrications

proliferate/proliferation: papañca – diffusiveness;

complication; worldliness; objectification

qualities: dhammā – phenomena

rapture: pīti – joy; zest

relinquishment: vossagga – letting go; self-surrender; release

right attitude: sammā-sankappā – right aim; right thought;

right resolve

right view: sammā-diṭṭhi

speech: vāca

spiritual friendship: kalyāṇamitta

stopping/ceasing: nirodha – ceasing; cessation

suffering/stress: dukkha – dis-ease; unsatisfactoriness

thirst (psychological)/craving: taṇhā – craving

Unprogrammed: asankhata – Unconditioned

verbal program: vaci-saṇkhāra – verbal formation

innate value/goodness: puñña – merit

wandering on: saṃsāra – endless wandering

This book is offered as a gift of Dhamma. It has been made available through the faith, effort and generosity of people who wish to share the understanding it contains with whomever is interested. This act of freely offering is itself part of what makes this a ‘Dhamma publication,’ a book based on spiritual values. Please do not sell this book in any form, nor otherwise use it for commercial purposes.

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……………………………………..

Amaravati Publications

Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Great Gaddesden, Hertfordshire, HP1 3BZ

United Kingdom,

http://www.amaravati.org

whole-life path 2

Posted on June 19, 2025 by tiramit

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
Continued from last week:
…don’t get fazed by the arising of old habits, but reflect on them to remind yourself to avoid old ways: don’t follow outdated maps and false guides. Of these, a good number will also crop up in one’s thinking mind. After all, this too is conditioned in terms of content (education, media) and in the authority we give to it.
In the world in general, thinking is held to be the supreme intelligence, and a guide to truth and fulfilment. Hmm. Really? How many of your thoughts fall into that category? A few meditation sessions will disabuse you of that notion. Many thoughts will be running on autopilot. Some will be planning, some brooding over the past, some playing themes that one has heard many, many times to no good end. All around ‘me’. Then look around at the great unknowables: ‘Why do things, even our own minds, occur? Am I or am I not? Is there a purpose to life? What happens when we die? Is there a soul, an afterlife, or what?’ What good would it do you if you could have all these worked out in your head anyway? Thinking can’t take you to where you know enough to not need more thinking.

But mindfulness opens another kind of intelligence. It surveys the process of thinking, cleans it, prunes it, trains it to report accurately on presently arising phenomena – and with dispassion turns down its voltage. When mindfulness is combined with other factors of awakening, the relative and changeable nature of experience becomes clear. You can notice the moment when a thought has ended; or acknowledge that a particular obsession isn’t running like it used to. This full knowing reduces suffering. You get to glimpse non-clinging, and with some calming and steadying you can consolidate awareness of that area where the mind isn’t seeking stimulation through thoughts or memories. That basis, where manas ceases and perceptions based on any ideas fade out, can yet be ‘sensed’.[**]

These resources and insights make it possible to bear with unpleasant feeling, as one recollects: ‘Unpleasant feeling sits on the life path; it is to be met, understood and handled with awareness.’ For example, when there is physical pain, can you cultivate the attention that notices where the pain isn’t? If you have pain in your legs, can you notice the ease in your neck? The habit of perception is to generate global felt meanings out of local feelings; and from that comes the experience ‘I’m in pain.’ To shift from that to ‘there is pain; it draws attention to the leg,’ is a good start. It checks the saṇkhāra program that is attracted to feeling, gathers around it and generates ‘I am’. To go against that trend, you widen awareness: you include your entire body, and you consider that all bodies experience painful feeling. But by referring to the relativity of the discomfort – that only a part of the body, and only a fraction of potential awareness, are occupied by any one feeling – and by not fighting the dukkha, a piece of the suffering of ‘I am’ can be abandoned. That dispassion allows a shift to a more manageable standpoint regarding the pain. This view of how stress lessens has to be realized, kept alive, and expanded. With this, you get a window into the domain of the mind which isn’t about feeling and interpreting and reacting.

This is significant when it comes down to psychological and emotional pain – because that is based on perceptions, meanings, assumptions and self-view, and could cease more completely than bodily pain.[56] Perceptions of being blamed, being overlooked or not treated sympathetically; impressions of betrayal and being a failure – they all cut deeply and engender painful feeling for a long time. Understandably, we don’t want or support such actions – but they happen. So, we have to cultivate an awareness that can be steady and spacious enough to feel unpleasant feeling without tightening, collapsing or reacting. That’s a part of anyone’s awakening process. And if the factors of awakening are strong, they can do the job. To them, feeling is just feeling. Mental feeling is generated through the manas activity of interpreting and hitting the sore spots of the citta in its programmed ways. This kind of feeling arises dependent on favouring or opposing what the mind itself has created. But when feelings and reactions have already arisen, or are associated with memory, getting upset about them is of no use. If we can mindfully widen around our reactions (‘what to do?’), then around our perceptions and patterns (‘I am this’), until we just feel the feeling – the feeling can pass. Then, although it may be the case that one has done something wrong or been treated unfairly, there’s no suffering.

For example: shifting the mind from irritation to patience can be brought around through noting the unpleasant quality of irritation, and any non-irritating aspect of the person or the event that is bothering us. ‘Waiting for an hour for someone isn’t much fun, but I’m safe here; I can practise with this and waiting won’t kill me.’ So, maybe we recollect patience, deliberately evoke it and attend to that quality. As another example: if we’re impassioned with a body or some consumer item, we might bring to mind the unattractive or the undesirable feature of it. In other words, to move from suffering to non-suffering we can substitute one image or mind-state for another.

However, the mind can eventually learn to move from the perceptions and programs that condition suffering without having an alternative image or thought to go to. It does this through penetrating that convincing mesh of ‘me and them and what I want to do’, and expanding awareness of a heart-impression – such as (in the above example) ‘I’m being treated like an idiot’ – until it is no longer ‘me’ and ‘mine’ but an impression (‘contracted, frustrated’). Then, by steadying and suffusing the citta with Dhamma resources, the perception, impression and feeling can dissolve. Suffering can cease whenever the factors of awakening gather round, remove the ‘person’ from the negative scenario, and attend to the citta directly. Then there’s no further kamma created: you don’t have to prove, contend, or defend; as the saṇkhāra releases, the hurt fades.

Through humble everyday practice such as this, the experience of the Third Noble Truth deepens. The mind steps back from the outflows, and as citta senses that, the flow of mental energy quietens. That is, if the mind is steadied, opened and dispassionate, an intrinsic and clear stillness can be experienced. It has no intention, and it doesn’t support becoming and self-view. It’s a kind of weightlessness which at the same time is the most grounded and steady thing you can know.

This has a long-term effect in terms of understanding: I don’t have to be something, simply because I never have been able to be anything in the first place – all that happened was a tangle of confused activity. The apparently trapped owner of the mind is exposed as a phantom, a confusion of consciousness. And as that confusion and that person abate, so also does the drive of intention; there is a sense of lightness and freedom.

As long as there’s the view that a real self is the owner, perpetrator and inheritor of kamma, that view supports pleasing or displeasing impressions and patterns, and a need to do something about it. When that view is relinquished, there is peace, because there’s nothing nagging away at the heart.[57] But it’s not that there’s now a view of being a self who is independent of kamma, or a view that there’s no need to do anything. In the domain of kamma, of cause and effect, skills around kamma have to be exercised – so it’s helpful to inquire into how to act co-operatively, and to mutually address our assumptions and programs. The Buddha demonstrated and encouraged such action throughout his life; it’s just that for an awakened being, there’s no outflow, no craving, no becoming to have to deal with. For the awakened, these are the actions that have utterly ceased.

Continued next week: 26 June 2025

whole-life path (part 1)

Posted on June 12, 2025 by tiramit

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
Continued from last week:
“Like this, you relinquish. Can you mentally share whatever good has arisen, and release wherever dukkha has got stuck? Like this, you relinquish. Can you begin the day with a dedication towards bringing skilful qualities into being, commit to that and learn to not ask for results? If you develop a practice like that, do it more often: whatever comes into being in the morning … in the afternoon … in the evening – you relinquish it, you let it go. Or around scenarios: whatever arises with this project … with this event … with this conversation … And so on. Even as you’re doing it, in every act, relinquish the actor. This check-in with relinquishment restrains ignorance, so one’s awareness can shift to being a presence through which qualities can stream in response to what arises. The liberated citta doesn’t impose, or require, a lot of conditions.“

The full scope of this ‘no-conditions’ view is encapsulated in the teaching of the Four Noble Truths: of suffering, its origin, its ceasing and the Path to that ceasing. All of these arise through fine-tuned intention. It’s rather like using an X-ray or an angiogram to look into aspects of your body. You’re not looking to the normal self-image with its definitions. Instead, you’re exploring where you’re stuck, what you need to do about it, where you’re getting free and how to develop that. The Four Noble Truths present us with a map of the old kamma we carry, of how fresh kamma gets generated, of how it doesn’t, and of the kamma that leads to that ceasing.

As we work on our mental patterns and programs, we acknowledge the suffering and stress involved with identifying with them: First Noble Truth. This takes us into the Second Noble Truth: that dukkha has an origin – in the reflex of craving and aversion that powers sense-desire, becoming and not-becoming. This suggests actions to get the mind clear enough and firm enough to arrest those reflexes.

The Third Noble Truth, that dukkha can stop, brings with it the intention that the stopping is to be fully realized and made into a path. This means expanding awareness into the full range of experience. It’s subtle because our attention is partial. That is, we readily notice the pressure and the snags in the heart; we give great significance to the ‘wow!’ and the ‘why me?’ of our emotive patterns. But to acknowledge non-suffering and non-passion takes the intention to develop and linger in qualities such as spaciousness and evenness of mind. Can we acknowledge the times when we’re not constructing some future, past or present; or anywhere in our bodies or minds where we feel settled? Because the Third Truth is also an acknowledgement that the dukkha that we could end arises dependent on the distorting influence of craving. So instead of looking for what might or ought to be, why not notice more fully what’s already here? For instance, there’s always awareness.

The Fourth Truth, the Truth of the Path, carries the intention that non-stress is to be integrated into life. This intention integrates all the practices of ethics, of meditation and of understanding; it causes us to consider right view, right attitude, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. What is ‘right’ about all of them is that they are based not on feeling, but on bright intention. (And that does have an agreeable feeling to it.) So, intention is paramount, and to be developed within the range of one’s actions and interactions.

Whole-Life Path [Part 1]
You can curtail some stressful kamma through willpower, rather like rapping your knuckles when you’re about to seriously go astray. Willpower has its uses. If you’re hypnotized, don’t keep gazing at and meditating on the swinging pendulum – instead, use willpower to break free. So it is with addictive habits – don’t follow them. But that action has to be backed up with firm and committed resolve, and with addressing the causes whereby we get addicted. If you only operate from willpower, you get brutal and stupid – and addicted to willpower. Powerful people need to have something to get wilful about, because they feel disoriented without willpower’s galvanising effect. But the more wilful the mind is, the less receptive and flexible it is; and that limits its capacity for inquiry and learning. What’s really needed is a full range of intentions – such as learning to act cooperatively with others, reviewing assumptions, and breaking old habits. We also need to linger in and absorb the good, and to maintain patience with the unpredictable that is at the heart of life.

For the supreme skill of coming out of the outflows, the Buddha listed a range of intentions: to focus with deep attention; to restrain the sense-faculties; to use material resources and requisites only as they are needed; to endure the disagreeable; to steer clear of one’s weak spots; to cut off the torrent of unskilful thoughts; and to develop the factors of awakening.[55] It’s a range that can cover one’s life.

This whole-life Path is founded in deep attention: in seeing experience not in terms of self and becoming, but in terms of qualities that lead out of suffering and stress or into it. This sets us up to meet contact-impressions without reactivity; and that changes intention on a wider scale – away from getting things done on time, or my way, to one of a patient assessment of what is skilful right now. Also, the shifting of attention from inflammatory topics to ones that deepen the mind and open the heart, leads to a fuller and more balanced approach to life. Above all, when we shift our view from ‘me’ and ‘my way’ and ‘why is life so unfair?’ to one of ‘where is there stress, and where does it stop?’, suffering and stress get curtailed, some long-term programs get switched off and liberating wisdom arises. The axiom is ‘What’s getting in my way, is the Way’ – if we use deep attention. It’s the most universally applicable tool for stepping out of stress.

With that understanding, we approach life like a pilgrimage – first with the unspoken inquiry: what do we need to take with us? How much do we delight in, depend on and consume material things? It’s a far-reaching series of questions. The fever for more, springing as it does from the neglect of our heart-resources, consumes everything: one’s attention, one’s generosity, one’s compassion, one’s society – as well as aspects of the biosphere that sustain our lives. In terms of the pilgrimage, this ignorance is a death trap.

So, it’s worthwhile looking into how much one uses and exploring why that is. I often look at my belongings and think: ‘If I had to leave here, say there was a fire, could I carry all I really need with me?’ It’s a good exercise. Another one is to scan one’s living space and reflect: ‘I can either have this (book, item of clothing, etc.) or I can have the space. Which do I prefer?’ I have a box in which I put anything I haven’t used for a while. If I don’t take it out of the box inside a month – why keep it? Maybe someone else can use it.

Also look out for where you tend to get caught. Be truthful about the weak spots; linger and scrutinize the blur of habitual activity, or of acting on assumptions or social pressure. Within these, the outflows run – with ignorance acting as their cover. This is old kamma. To the extent that one’s mind has followed the consumer ethic of the mainstream; to the extent that one’s attention has been trained in the ‘business model’ of a narrow focus on external goals and minimal introspection; to the extent that one has identified with power and status, or got caught up with social trends – through any of that, the citta is bound to have acquired residual habits. It will also be undernourished in terms of deep attention and qualities that lead to awakening. This condition can change, but that does entail cultivating deep attention and keeping away from where the outflows stream. Meanwhile, don’t get fazed by the arising of old habits, but reflect on them to remind yourself to avoid old ways: don’t follow outdated maps and false guides. Of these, a good number will also crop up in one’s thinking mind. After all, this too is conditioned in terms of content (education, media) and in the authority we give to it.

Continued next week 19 June 2025

distortions and clear seeing

Posted on June 5, 2025 by tiramit

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
Continued from last week:
Isn’t it the case that much of life is the experience of trying to have an experience that we’re not having? Or trying to not have the experience that we are having? That underlying drive is outflow, its trigger is feeling and its drive is by craving. Therefore, any action – or decisive inaction – that goes against the craving, and any shift by which we see through the ignorance that obscures the failure of craving to give us fulfilment, must be crucial. That shift is away from regarding these outflows as the bases of our identity, and towards dispassionate inquiry. [53]

If there is dispassion, there’s the capacity to not blindly follow feeling. That allows the three characteristics to be verified. In terms of sense-contact, we can witness anicca not just with regard to transience, but also with how relative sense-contact is: how it just touches an aspect of awareness, and limits the ‘inner’ heart qualities. We can lose an essential part of ourselves in the senses. Furthermore, sense-contact is dukkha, in that it doesn’t satisfy and has to be reached out to.

Acknowledging these characteristics has an effect on intention; craving is checked and the outflow into the sense-fields gets arrested – not through becoming blind, deaf or brainless, but by softening or removing the mind’s automatic link to sense-contact. This brake on sensory attachment also arrests the current of ignorance: if we maintain awareness as the pull into sight, taste, thought and so on ceases, we can see through the current and notice that, where that outflow stops, it’s peaceful.

Therefore, through dispassionate seeing there’s an alternative to bonding to the caused and conditioned flux of sense-consciousness. Replacing that outflow with kindness, sharing and other aspects of goodwill is definitely more satisfying. So the shift to dispassion affects our source of well-being and of long-term motivation. It even changes who we seem to be.

The flood of becoming is more difficult. Our social lives run on it; this outflow carries the future, the past and our sense of identity. But when you look at experience directly, it’s obvious that all we are or have is arising in awareness right now; our memories happen now, the results of what we’ve been involved with happen now, and our projected future happens now. Yes, we have to plan and retain information; we have to acquire knowledge and adequate resources to keep going … but if one acknowledges that time brings with it uncertainty about the future (uncertainty being another feature of anicca), and the recognition that things are never complete (dukkha again), such an acknowledgement steadies and cools intention. As the future is always uncertain, we choose to pause, deepen and clear the blur of assumptions and expectations rather than keep running on autopilot. The mind then operates in an immediacy that allows its full resources to gather, and to be more discerning about specific action – or non-action.

Furthermore, this review of becoming means that the self-referencing that ripples on the tide of action can arise free of worry, expectations or compulsive duty. This gives the mind a way of lessening some of the tangles of identity, while getting a feel for the natural arising of good qualities. For example, faith and clarity arise ‘by themselves’: the less of the habitual ‘me’, the more the spaciousness and ease. In a world of unknowables, this is directly knowable – and positive.

Of course, in relationship to others, we orient around becoming a recognizable and reliable individual, even though heart and mind are ever-fluctuating. It’s good to have a responsible approach towards being with others. How then to handle that sense of becoming someone? How to distinguish between skilful motivation and craving? True enough, chanda and taṇhā do get mixed up – what starts as aspiration and motivation can easily slide into ‘I have to do … everyone depends on me … got to make it work!’ In the vortex of kamma, an understandable craving for a feel-good result has crept in – and ‘future’, ‘solid result’ and ‘self and other’ attempt to sail across an ocean that’s marked by anicca, dukkha, anattā. Stress and suffering are on their way.

This is because the wished-for results cannot be guaranteed. Maybe you don’t have the skills right now, or the scenario isn’t open to your input. Even the Buddha could only point the way – and his own cousin tried to kill him seven times. So he didn’t always get positive reviews. Therefore, be on the lookout for an intention that’s hungry for results, or expects people to understand and agree with you. That’s craving. Also, be attentive when circumstances change. Maybe there’s the loss of a partner or a job, maybe there’s illness or disability, maybe the great plan gets capsized, or the ability to make things happen is checked. Whatever … when the way forward gets blocked, it’s time to breathe in … and out … and attend to the citta. To the extent that there’s becoming, sorrow, anxiety or irritation wells up. But this can also be a learning moment: to what extent was I invested in the future? What condition was I relying on to be steady and “stable? Give deep attention to the citta: that’s the correct motivation; giving ungrounded attention to the feeling invites the taṇhā that will throw you into suffering. Seen in this way, the characteristic of dukkha is a pointer not to the cynicism of not-becoming, but to cultivating wisdom. Learn about dispassionate action. With that you act, but realize your actions occur in a field that’s not under your control.

Operating within a dynamic and sensitive context takes balance. But as you cultivate that balance, you get more sensitive to the things that go wrong, or the internal discord. The mind, or rather the force of becoming in the mind, tries to change all that, set things straight, tidy and right. So, it operates with the search tag: ‘What next? What should I do? What is right?’, as if there could be a knowable next, or an ultimately right way of doing things. Thus, it creates an anxious, agitated self – one who thinks that the unsatisfactori-ness of mind-states, actions, plans and people is going to get cured by their actions – ‘and then I can settle and be happy.’ This strategy never succeeds. The trajectory of becoming is always towards suffering, stress and a self who’s stuck in it.

The Unborn
‘There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks, there were not that unborn, unbecome, “unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.’
(Udāna 8:3; Bhikkhu Ānandajoti, trans.)

Motivation, however, can aim towards meeting the unknown and fallible with a dispassionate openness; and it can gather the skills and strengths to do so. Present-moment agility and quick-wittedness are the qualities of a citta that’s fit for work. Just as someone walking a tightrope can’t succeed if they think of how they should walk or whether they’re good enough, so one has to switch from the thirst for becoming to the desire for balance. That desire, that Dhamma-motivation, is to steer the mind out of becoming and not-becoming, into a balance where the fog of ignorance and craving can lift.

Any scenario will suggest a range of possible outcomes; if there is ignorance, if I’m coming from a self-view, my attempts to make the possible into the actual run down the track of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Then I have a fixed idea of a desirable outcome, I get impatient, even forceful, and probably overlook a few details or even people … so the flow of becoming creates a forceful self who feels frustrated and offends others.

A better way to proceed is to put aside time and identity, steadily. Can you relax the time boundary and its pressure, and trust good qualities to do their work? Can you go easy on what you should, will, or will never be; or what you feel others want you to be? As a memo: whatever you do, you could have done it differently; whatever you do, some will like it and some won’t; whoever they are, there will be a degree of confusion, conflict and separation in relationship to them.

You can discharge any waves of uncertainty and the pressures they can bring up by extending mindful awareness over the bodily and emotional effects. Then you have a base from which to step back from compulsive programs. As you sense the steadying effect of that, you’ve done the first important thing. You’ve checked the tide; and as a more dispassionate awareness opens around the feeling, the spin of doubt, pressure and agitation calms down. Then the citta can open.

With that clearer view, you can notice that what has become – that is, the present mind-state or scenario – is just that. It has a good or bad quality, but it isn’t an identity. If it were an identity, you’d be in that state from birth to death. Can you witness that quality rather than become it? What you can recognize is that it’s not the changeable and stress-inducing characteristics of conditioned qualities that are the problem you can solve – it’s the belief that they should be otherwise. Because of this ignorance, there is becoming this or that – and no peace. Moreover, the problem isn’t that one hasn’t become an utterly effective and unwavering person, it’s the belief that body, feeling, perception, programs/formations and consciousness could assemble one. That’s another fantasy.

The Buddha called these beliefs (along with the belief that true beauty lies in the realm of sense-contact) ‘distortions’ (vipallāsā).[54] To get free from these distortions entails relating to what arises in line with the characteristics of anicca, dukkha, anattā – and to maintain that view as you act. This destroys craving – this is relinquishment (vossagga), this is letting go; it is the springboard to the Unconditioned.

Can you acknowledge at the end of a day that whatever becoming has occurred for you, it’s just that, and not a person, not a fixed state? That the praise, the blame, the elation and dejection are perceptions, felt meanings, patterns and programs? Meet them, know them, then settle the mind. Like this, you relinquish. Can you mentally share whatever good has arisen, and release wherever dukkha has got stuck? Like this, you relinquish. Can you begin the day with a dedication towards bringing skilful qualities into being, commit to that and learn to not ask for results? If you develop a practice like that, do it more often: whatever comes into being in the morning … in the afternoon … in the evening – you relinquish it, you let it go. Or around scenarios: whatever arises with this project … with this event … with this conversation … And so on. Even as you’re doing it, in every act, relinquish the actor. This check-in with relinquishment restrains ignorance, so one’s awareness can shift to being a presence through which qualities can stream in response to what arises. The liberated citta doesn’t impose, or require, a lot of conditions.