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

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“Kamma and the end of Kamma

  Amaravati Publications

  Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

  Great Gaddesden, Hertfordshire, HP1 3BZ

  United Kingdom,

  http://www.amaravati.org