noticing the way it is

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Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” the. chapter titled: “The End of Suffering is Now,” retitled in this blog: “Noticing the way it is” This is the first of two parts. The original by Ajahn Sumedho, is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

The term sakkāya-diṭṭhi (personality view’ or the ego) refers to perceptions we hold in regard to our identity with the five khandhas as belonging to ‘this person.’ However, instead of starting with a perception or a conception of anything, the Buddha established a way through awakened attention, where consciousness is with the present moment, beginning to explore sakkāya-diṭṭhi in terms of the perceptions you are attached to and regard as your ‘self.’ I emphasize deliberately conceiving yourself as a person, with the thought: ‘I’m an unenlightened person who has come here to Amaravati in order to practise meditation so that I will become an enlightened person in the future.’ You can have comments about this, form more perceptions about these perceptions, but that’s not the point. This deliberate thinking allows us to listen to ourselves as we think.

When you are caught in the wandering mind, you lose yourself; you just go from one thought to another and get carried away. But deliberate thinking is not like wandering thinking. It’s intentional, for you are choosing whatever you are going to think. The important thing is not the thought, or even the quality of the thought, whether it’s stupid or intelligent, right or wrong. It’s the attention, the ability to observe the thoughts that you are deliberately thinking. What happens to me is that before I start thinking, ‘I am an unenlightened person,’ there is a space. There is an empty pause before you deliberately think. So, notice that. That’s just the way it is; there is no perception in that space, but there is attention to it, there is awareness before ‘I am an unenlightened person’ arises. Thinking about this is not wandering thinking, it’s not judging or analyzing, but just noticing it’s like this. When you deliberately think, you can also use thought to keep pointing to this awareness, noticing the way it is.

With the pronoun ‘I’ in a sentence such as, ‘I am an unenlightened person,’ if you listen to it and the words that follow, you will realize that you are creating this consciousness of yourself through the words you are deliberately thinking. That which is aware of your thinking – what is that? Is it a person who is aware? Or is it pure awareness? Is this awareness personal, or does the person arise in the awareness? This is exploring, investigating, and by doing so you are getting to notice the way it is, the Dhamma, that there is actually no person who is being aware; it’s rather that awareness will include what seems personal.

‘I am an unenlightened person who needs to practise meditation in order to become an enlightened person in the future.’ With thoughts like this, one assumes I am this body, with this past. I am … years old, born in such and such a place, I’ve done all these things and so I have a history to prove that this person exists. I have a passport and a birth certificate, but really there doesn’t seem to be any person in the awareness.

I find the more I am aware, my personal past seems totally unimportant and of no interest whatsoever. It doesn’t mean anything, actually. It’s just a few memories. Yet taking it from the personal view, if I get caught in thinking about myself as a real personality, then suddenly I find my past important. An identity gives me the sense that I am a person. ‘I have a past, I am somebody. I am somebody important; or not terribly important, but at least I feel connected to something in the past. I have a home, I have a heritage.’ Some people talk about losing the sense of their identity because they’re refugees, their parents are dead, they’re of mixed race, or they don’t have any real clear identity of themselves as belonging to something in the past. The sense of a personality depends very much on proving that you are somebody, your education, your race, your accomplishments or lack of accomplishments, whether you are an interesting or uninteresting person, important or unimportant.

In meditation we are not trying to deny personality. We are not trying to convince ourselves that we are non-people, grasping ideas that ‘I have no nationality, I have no gender, I have no social class, I have no race, the pure Dhamma is my true identity.’ That’s still another identity. That’s not it. It’s not about grasping the concepts of no-self. It’s in realizing, in noting through awakened attention the way things really are. In this simple exercise of saying, ‘I am an unenlightened person,’ this process can be quite deliberate.

When I did this exercise, it became clear what awareness is – sati-sampajañña, mindful, apperception. There is awareness, then thinking and perceptions arise. So deliberately thinking ‘I am an unenlightened person’ arises in this awareness. This awareness is not a perception, it’s an apperception; a cognition that includes perception. Perceptions arise and cease. Awareness is not personal, it doesn’t have any Ajahn Sumedho quality to it, it’s not male or female, bhikkhu or sīladharā (nun), or anything like that; it has no quality on the conventional, conditioned level. It is like nothing. This awareness – ‘I am an unenlightened person’ – and then nothing. There’s no person. So, you are exploring, you are investigating these gaps before ‘I’ and after ‘I’. You say ‘I’ – there’s sati-sampajañña, there’s the sound of silence. ‘I am’ arises in this awareness, this consciousness. As you investigate this, you can question.

This awareness is not a creation, whereas ‘I am’ is something I create. What is more real than ‘I am an unenlightened person’ is this awareness, sati-sampajañña. Awareness is continuous, it’s what sustains. The sense of yourself as a person can go any which way. As you think about yourself and who you are, who you should be, who you would like to be, who you do not want to be, how good or bad, wonderful or horrible you are – all this whirls around, it goes all over the place. One moment you can feel, ‘I’m a really wonderful person,’ the next moment you can feel, ‘I am an absolutely hopeless, horrible person.’ But if you take refuge in awareness, then whatever you’re thinking doesn’t make much difference. Your refuge is in this ability to rest in awareness, rather than in the gyrations and fluctuations of the self-view, of your sakkāya-diṭṭhi habits.

Notice how being a person is really like a yo-yo; it goes up and down all the time. With praise you feel you’re wonderful – then you’re a hopeless case, you’re depressed, a victim of circumstances. You win the lottery and you’re elated. Then somebody steals all the money and you’re suicidal. This is because the personality is like that. It’s very dependent. You can be terribly hurt on a personal level. Or you can be exhilarated: people find you just the most wonderful, thrilling, exciting personality and you feel happy.

When I was a young monk, I used to pride myself on how well I kept the Vinaya discipline, that I was really, really good with the Vinaya. I understood it and I was very strict. Then I stayed for a while with another monk on an island called Ko Sichang off the coast of Siraja. Later on, this monk told somebody else that didn’t keep good Vinaya. I wanted to murder him! Even Vinaya can support another form of self-view. As when somebody says, ‘Oh, Ajahn Sumedho is exemplary, a top-notch monk!’ – that feels wonderful. Then, ‘He’s a hopeless case, doesn’t keep good Vinaya,’ – I want to murder him. So, then I begin to question ‘Just how good a monk am I?’ This is how untrustworthy the self is.

In fact, being a person of any kind is an untrustworthy state to put your refuge in, because we can rise to great altruism and then sink to the most depraved depths in just a second. Even holding the view that ‘I am a good monk’ is a pretty dodgy refuge. If that’s all you know, then when someone says that you are not a very good monk, you’re angry, you’re hurt, you’re offended. However, despite all the fluctuations, sati-sampajañña is constant. This is why I see it as a refuge – because it’s not dependent on praise and blame, success and failure.

Continued next week, 2nd May 2024

Link to the original:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

apperception 2

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Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” the. chapter titled: “When You’re an Emotional Wreck,” retitled in this blog: “Apperception” (perception of perception). This is the second and last part of the chapter. The original by Ajahn Sumedho, is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

One of the ideals we talk about is the concept of universal compassion. But the words themselves have no ability to feel compassion. We might attach to the most beautiful, perfect ideals, but attachment blinds us. We can talk about how we must all love each other, have compassion for all sentient beings, but not be able to do that in any practical way, to feel it or notice it. Then, going into the heart – where oftentimes it’s amorphous, where it’s not clean, neat and tidy, like the intellect – emotions can be all over the place. The intellect says, ‘Oh, emotional things are so messy. You can’t trust them,’ and feel embarrassed. “ I don’t want to be considered emotional.’ Then someone says, ‘Ajahn Sumedho is very emotional.’ Whoa – I don’t want anyone to think that. So maybe you think of Ajahn Sumedho as mindful, reasonable, intelligent, reasonable, kind. Now, I like that. That’s nice. But, ‘Ajahn Sumedho is emotional’ – it makes me sound like I’m weak and wet, doesn’t it? ‘Ajahn Sumedho is emotional. He cries, he weeps and he’s wet. He’s all over the place. Ugh.’ Emotions are oftentimes simply ignored or rejected and not appreciated. We don’t learn from them, because we’re always rejecting or denying them. At least I found this easy to do myself. Sati-sampajañña is opening and being willing to be a mess. Let a mess be a mess; a mess is like this. Wet, weak, all over the place, being foolish and silly, stupid; sati-sampajañña embraces all that. It’s not passing judgement or trying to control, to pick or choose. It’s simply the act of noticing that whatever emotion is present, this is the way it is, it’s like this.

So, the point that includes – notice it’s the here-and-now, the paccuppanna-dhamma, just switching on this immanent kind of attention. It’s a slight shift. It isn’t very much, just relaxing and opening to the present, listening, being attentive. It’s not going into some kind of real super-duper samādhi at all. It’s just like this. It doesn’t seem like much at all. As you relax, trust and rest in it, you find it sustains itself. It’s natural, you are not creating it. In this openness, in this one point that includes, you can be aware of emotions that you don’t usually bother with, like feeling lonely or sad, or subtleties such as resentment or disappointment. Extreme emotions are quite easy because they force themselves into attention. But as you open, you can be aware of subtle emotions. Not judging this, just embracing it, so that it’s not making a problem about the way it is, it’s just knowing the way it is. At this moment, the vedanā-saññā-saṅkhārā, the feelings, perceptions and mental formations, are like this. Rūpa, the body, is like this.

Notice what it’s like when you open to an emotional feeling or mood without judging it or making any problem out of it. Whether it’s an emotional feeling or physical feeling, whatever its quality, you’re learning to embrace it, to sustain your attention by holding it without trying to get rid of it, change it or think about it. Just totally accept the mood you’re in, the emotional state, or the physical sensations like pain, itching or tension, with this sense of well-being, of embracing. When I do this, I notice the ‘changingness’. When you are willing to let something be the way it is, it changes. Then you begin to recognize or realize non-attachment. In this way, sati-sampajañña is not attaching, it’s embracing. It’s a sense of widening, it includes; it’s not picky-choosy. It’s not saying, ‘I’ll pick only the good things; I won’t pick the bad ones.’ It takes the bad along with the good, the whole thing, the worm and the apple, the snake and the garden. It allows things to be what they are, but it’s not approving. It’s not saying that you have to love worms and want them in your apples, to like them as much as you like apples. It’s not asking you to be silly or ridiculous, but it’s encouraging you to allow things to exist, even the things we don’t want, because if they exist, that’s what they do, they’re existing. The whole thing belongs, the good and the bad. Sati-sampajañña is our ability to realize that, to know in a direct way, and then the processes take care of themselves. It’s not a case of Ajahn Sumedho trying to get his act together, trying to cleanse his mind, free himself from defilements, deal with his immature emotions, straighten out his wrong, crooked views, trying to make himself into a better monk and become enlightened in the future. That doesn’t work, I guarantee — I’ve tried it!

From this perspective, you can use upāya (skilful means) for particular conditions that come up. One could say, ‘Just be mindful of everything.’ That’s true, that’s not wrong. But some things are quite obsessive or threatening to us, so we can develop skilful means with them. I got a lot of encouragement from Ajahn Chah to develop skilful means, and that takes paññā. It’s using paññā to see how I would deal with things, especially difficult emotional states and habits. Don’t be afraid to experiment. See what comes up using catharsis, talking it out with somebody who will listen to you, or thinking it out deliberately.

One of my skilful means was listening to my thoughts as if they were neighbours talking on the other side of the fence. I’m just an innocent bystander listening whilst they carry on these conversations. I’m actually producing all the gossip, opinions and views in my own mind. I’m not involved, not getting interested in the subject matter, but just listening as it goes on and on about what it likes and doesn’t like, and what’s wrong with this person and what’s wrong with that person, and why I like this better than that, and if you want my opinion about this … I just kept listening to these inner voices, these opinionated, arrogant, conceited, foolish voices that go on. Be aware of that which is aware; notice that. The awareness is my refuge, not the gossiping, not the arrogant voices or opinions and views.

We can learn to help each other by just listening. Learning to listen to somebody is about developing relationship rather than preaching and trying to tell somebody how to practise and what to do. Sometimes all we need to do is learn how to listen to somebody else with our own sati-sampajañña, so that they have the opportunity to verbalize their own fears or desires without being condemned or given all kinds of advice. Listening can be a very skilful means. Some kinds of therapy can be considered skilful means that help us deal with problems that are usually emotional, and where we tend to be most blind and undeveloped is in the emotional realm.

Skilful means is learning that you do have the wisdom to do it. If you think that ‘I’m not wise enough to do that,’ don’t believe it. But also, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s not that one is better than the other, just trust your own experience of suffering. If you find you obsess a lot, suddenly things will fill your consciousness: memories will come up, certain emotions, foolish thoughts or silly things can pursue you. We can say, ‘I don’t want to bother with that stupidity, I’m trying to get my samadhi and be filled with loving-kindness – do all the right things,’ and not see what we are doing. When we think that, we’re trying to make ourselves fit into an image that is unreal. It’s imagined, it’s an idealized image. The Buddha certainly did not expect that. Whatever way it is for you is the way it is. That’s what you learn from, that’s where enlightenment is – right there – when you’re an emotional wreck.

Link to the original:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

apperception

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Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” the. chapter titled: “When You’re an Emotional Wreck,” retitled in this blog: “Apperception” (perception of perception). The original by Ajahn Sumedho, is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

We’re in a retreat situation in Amaravati. Everything is under control and perfect for what we regard as a proper, formal retreat. In contrast to this, next week there will be a lot of comings and goings, and things happening that we can’t control. So, just be aware of expectation, and the view about what a proper, formal retreat should be. Whatever views or opinions you may have, just know the way they are. Whatever kind of irritation, frustration or aversion you might feel – you can use all of that for meditation. The important thing is to maintain the awareness that ‘it is the way it is’ rather than making attempts to suppress your feelings, ignore, or get upset and angry about things not going the way you want, and then not taking the opportunity to observe the way it is. If one is upset about the way it is, one can use that as a part of the meditation.

Unwanted things happen in any retreat. Like the window in the Temple: the electric motor that opens and closes it doesn’t work. High-tech! Then the spotlight went out. I notice in my own mind that when things go wrong, things break or things are going in a way that makes me feel frustration or irritation, then I like to use those situations. If the window doesn’t close, and the spotlight doesn’t go on, I can feel a certain way. I’m aware of that feeling of not wanting the spotlight or window to be broken, of wanting to get it fixed right away, ‘We can just get somebody in to do it during the break so it doesn’t interfere with my practice.’ But notice in all of this that mindfulness is the important factor, because concentration can get disrupted. However, mindfulness, if you trust it, opens to the flow of life as an  experience, with its pleasure and pain.

Sati-sampajañña, awareness, apperception or intuitive awareness: I keep reiterating this so that you can really appreciate the difference between intuitive awareness and thinking and analysis that comes from trying to get something or get rid of something. If you’re caught in the thinking process, then you’ll end up always with, ‘Well, it should be like this and it shouldn’t be like that,’ and ‘This is right and that is wrong.’ We can even say, ‘The Buddha’s teachings are right,’ and get attached to that idea! The result of that, if we don’t have enough sati-sampajañña along with it, is that we become Buddhists who feel we are right because we’re following the ‘right’ teaching. Thus, as a consequence of attachment and the way we perceive the Buddha’s teachings, we can become self-righteous Buddhists. We can feel that any other form of Buddhism that doesn’t fit into what we consider right is then wrong, or that other religions are wrong. That’s the thinking behind self-righteous views – notice how limiting it is. We can be attached to these thoughts and perceptions, or to negative, inferior perceptions of ourselves, and think that’s right. Apperception means being aware of perceptions – perceptions of myself or that Buddhism is right … and they’re like this. There’s still consciousness, awareness, intelligence. It’s pure, but it’s not ‘my purity’ as a personal achievement, it’s naturally pure.

Notice that this awareness includes the body, the emotions and the intellect. Sati-sampajañña includes everything. It’s not dismissing the physical condition that we’re experiencing; it includes the emotional state and whatever state your body is in, whether it’s healthy or sickly, strong or weak, male or female, young or old – whatever. The quality is not the issue; it’s not saying how your body should be, but the body is included in this moment. Apperception is the ability to embrace that which is, and the body is right now. This is my experience. The body is right here – I can certainly feel it. Awareness includes emotional states, no matter what they are. Whether you’re happy or sad, elated or depressed, confused or clear, confident or doubtful, jealous or frightened, greedy or lustful, awareness includes and notices all those in a way that is not critical.

We’re not saying, ‘You shouldn’t have lustful emotions,’ or anything like that. We’re not making moral judgements, because we’re using sati-sampajañña. If you get caught up in your brain, your intellect, then it says, ‘Oh! You’re having lustful thoughts in the shrine room. You shouldn’t do that. You’re not a very good monk or nun if you do things like that. You’re impure!’ We’re attached to these judgements, this judgemental function we have, but sati-sampajañña includes that; it includes the judgement. It doesn’t judge judgement; it’s noticing the tyrannical, self-righteous superego that says, ‘You shouldn’t be the way you are. You shouldn’t be selfish. You should be compassionate and loving.’ ‘Buddhism is right.’ ‘I’m getting nowhere in my practice.’ Sati-sampajañña embraces that. It’s just noticing the way it is. I can listen to my intellect, my superego, emotional states and the body – but with sati-sampajañña the attitude is one of ‘I know that. I know you.’ It’s patient with all this. It’s not trying to control or make any problem out of it. As we relax and open to these things, we allow them to change on their own, we give them that opportunity. They have their own kammic force. Our refuge is not in thinking or emotions or the physical body, but in this simple ability to listen, to be attentive to this moment.

I always use the practice of listening to the sound of silence – that subtle, continuous inner ringing tone in the background of experience – because every time I open the mind, that’s what I hear. Its presence contains and embraces the body, the emotional quality and the thinking mind all at once. It’s not like A-B-C or anything in tandem or sequence. Just the way it is, as a whole, it includes. It doesn’t pick and choose, ‘I want this but I don’t want that.’ Noticing, trusting and valuing this ability that each one of us has is something to really treasure and cultivate.

You can reflect on intuition as the point that includes or embraces. In addition to the intuitive ability, we have the thinking ability. The thinking ability excludes, like the single-pointedness you get through concentrating on an object. With a single point for concentration, you focus on it in order to exclude distractions. When you’re using intuitive awareness, it includes all that is there. The single point you get through concentration is just a perception. When you take it literally, it means one naturally excludes anything that’s not in that point. That’s the rational, logical way of looking at it. One-pointedness can be seen in terms of the one point that excludes everything, because that’s the logic of thought. Intuition is non-verbal and non-thinking, so the point is everywhere, it includes. This is sati-sampajañña and satipaññā, or mindful wisdom. You can’t do this through thinking or analysis, or by defining or acquiring all the knowledge in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka or the suttas, and so becoming an expert on Buddhism because you might know a lot about it. But you won’t know it. It’s like knowing all about honey without tasting it – chemical formulae, different qualities, which one is rated the highest, the best and the sweetest, which one is considered common and vulgar, lower-realm honey – you might know all that but not know the flavour of any of it. You ca n have pictures and portraits of it, the whole lot. But if you just taste honey, then you are intuitively aware that it tastes like this.

Paññā, or wisdom, comes from intuition, not from analysis. You can know all about Buddhism and still not use any wisdom in your life. I like the word combinations sati-sampajañña and satipaññā (wisdom based on mindfulness). Sati-sampajañña is not something that you acquire through studying, or through trying to pursue it by will alone. It is awakening, learning to trust this awakening, paying attention to life. It’s an immanent act of trust in the unknown, because you can’t get hold of it. People like to ask, ‘Define it for me, describe it to me, tell me if I have it.’ Nobody can tell you, ‘Well, I think you have it, you look like you’re mindful right now.’ A lot of people who look mindful are not necessarily mindful at all. It’s not a matter of someone telling you, or acquiring the right definitions for the words, but in recognising and realizing the reality of it and trusting it .

I used to experiment with this because of my background. I spent many years studying in university and was conditioned by wanting to define and understand everything through the intellect. I was always in a state of doubt. The more I tried to figure everything out, I still wasn’t certain whether I had got it right or not, because the thinking process has no certainty to it. It’s clean and neat and tidy, but it is not liberating in itself. Emotional things are a bit messy. With emotions you can cry, you can feel sad, you can feel sorry, you can feel angry and jealous and all kinds of messy feelings. But a nice intellectual frame of reference is so pleasurable because it’s tidy and neat. It isn’t messy, doesn’t get sticky, wet and soggy, but it doesn’t feel anything either. When you’re caught in the intellect, it sucks you away from your feelings. Your emotional life doesn’t work anymore, so you suppress it because you’re attached to thought, reason and logic. Intellect has its pleasure and its gifts, but also makes you insensitive. Thoughts do not have any sensitive capability. Thoughts are not sensitive conditions.

Continued next week, 18 April 2024

Link to the original:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

identity part 2

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Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho, the Chapter titled Identity. This is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

As soon as we identify with a negative thought, it hooks us: ‘Oh, here I go again, being critical and negative about somebody and I shouldn’t do that. I’ve been a monk all these years and how can I stop doing that?’ I’ve identified with a negative thought and it triggers off all kinds of feelings of despair. Or, ‘I shouldn’t be like this, I shouldn’t think like this. A good monk should love everybody.’ With awareness, you suddenly stop that, and you’re back in the centre again.

So just recognize, no matter how many times you go out on the wheel, it’s just a very simple act of attention to be back in the centre. It’s not that difficult, remote or precious; we’re simply not used to it. We’re used to being on the turning wheel. We’re used to going around and around and becoming all kinds of things. We’re used to delusions, fantasies, dreams. We’re used to extremes. What we’re used to we are inclined to do if we’re not attentive, if we’re not vigilant. Then we easily fall back onto the turning wheel because we’re used to that, even though we suffer. When we aren’t aware, when we aren’t vigilant and attentive, then we easily fall back into the realm of suffering. The good side of it is the more we develop awareness, cultivate awareness, we then start de-programming those habits. We’re not feeding these illusions anymore. We’re not believing, we’re not following, we’re not resisting. We’re not making any problem about the body as it is, the memories, the thoughts, the habits or the personality that we have. We’re not judging or condemning, praising, adulating or exaggerating anything. It is what it is. As we do that, our identification with the personal condition begins to slip away. We no longer seek identity with our illusions; we’ve broken through that. When we’ve seen through that illusion of self, what we think we are, then our inclination is towards this centre point, this Buddho position.

This is something you can really trust. That’s why I keep saying this, just as a way of encouraging you. If you think about it, you don’t trust it. You can get very confused because other people will say other things and you’ll hear all kinds of views and opinions about meditation, Buddhism and so on. Within this sangha there are so many monks and nuns, so many views and opinions. It’s a matter of learning to trust yourself, the ability to be aware rather than think, ‘I’m not good enough to trust myself. I’ve got to develop the jhānas first. I’ve got to purify my sīla first, my ethical conduct. I’ve got to get rid of my neurotic problems and traumas first before I can meditate.’ If you believe that, then it’s what you’ll have to do. But if you begin to see what you’re doing, that very illusion, then you can trust in that simple recognition. It’s not even condemning the illusion. It’s not saying you shouldn’t do those things. I’m not saying you shouldn’t purify your sīla or resolve your emotional problems, go to therapy or develop the jhānas. I’m not making any statement about ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’, but rather I’m pointing to something that you can trust – this awareness, sati-sampajañña, here and now.

If one of you should come to me and say, ‘Ajahn Sumedho, I’ve got so many neurotic problems and fears. I really need to go to therapy and get these things straightened up in some way because I can’t meditate the way I am,’ and I say, ‘Well, that self-view might even be right on a worldly level – I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to a therapist. What’s best is to not say you are this way or that way – to not give you some kind of identity to attach to – but to empower or encourage you to trust in your own ability to wake up, to pay attention. I don’t know what the result of that will be. I hope it will be good. But what’s true is that your true identity isn’t dependent upon any condition.

Pointing to the present, the paccuppanna-dhamma, we can grasp that idea and then think we don’t need to do all those things. ‘We don’t need to be monks or nuns; we don’t need therapy. We can just meditate. Pure meditation will solve all our problems.’ Then we grasp that and become anti-religious: ‘All religion is a waste of time; it’s all a bunch of rubbish. Psychotherapy is a waste of time. You don’t need that. All you need to do is be mindful and meditate.’ That’s another viewpoint. Those kinds of opinions are not pointing to the centre, they’re judging the conditions or the conventions. And even though you can say that it is true, that ultimately all you need to do is to wake up – simple as that – that in itself is a convention of language. This empowerment or encouragement is pointing to an immanent act of awakening. It’s not telling you that you are some kind of person who is asleep and should wake up, or that you should grasp that idea. It is pointing to that sense of actually being awake, aware.

In the Western world we get very complicated because we don’t usually have a lot of faith, or saddhā. Asian Buddhists tend to be more culturally attuned to this. They have a lot of faith in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha or a teacher. Most of us come to Buddhism or become monks or nuns when we’re adults, and we’re sceptical. Usually, we’ve gone through a lot of sceptical doubts and have strong self-images, and a hard, strong sense of individuality. Speaking for myself, my personality was a doubting, sceptical one. This doubt, or vicikicchā, was one of my greatest obstructions. That’s why I couldn’t be Christian: it was totally impossible for me to believe in the kinds of doctrines that you have to believe in to be one. I was a sceptical, doubting character. At the age of thirty-two I was quite cynical. I’d been through a lot, and had quite a lot of bitterness about life. I was not pleased with my life at thirty-two. I was disappointed with myself and a lot of others. There was a kind of despair, bitterness and doubt, and yet the faint light at the end of the tunnel was Buddhism. That was one thing I still had some hope for, my interest in Buddhism. It was a sign to me, something that drew me into this life.

The good thing about being highly individualistic, sceptical and doubtful is that you do tend to question everything. One thing I appreciated with Ajahn Chah was that everything was up for questioning. That which is sacred and oftentimes never questioned in religions, was allowed to be questioned. He was never one for a peremptory approach of ‘you have to believe in this and you have to believe in that.’ There was never that hard, heavy-handed, dictatorial style; it was much more this reflective questioning and inquiry. One of the problems with Westerners is that we’re complicated because of the lack of faith. Our identities get complicated in so many ways, and are highly personal; we take everything personally. Sexual desire and the sexual forces in the body are regarded as very personal. The same is true with how we identify with hunger and thirst. We judge the basic forces that are natural and take them personally, thinking we shouldn’t be cowardly and weak, pusillanimous. We get complicated because we judge ourselves endlessly, criticize ourselves according to very high, ideal standards – noble standards we can never live up to. We get self-disparaging, neurotic and depressed because we’re not in touch with nature. We’ve come from the world of ideas rather than from realizing the natural law.

In meditation it’s a matter of recognizing the way it is – the Dhamma or the natural law, the way things are – that sexual desire is like this, it’s not mine. The body is like this; it has sexual organs so it’s going to have these energies. This is the way it is. It’s not personal. I didn’t create it. We begin to look at the most obvious things, the basics, the human body, in terms of ‘the way it is’ rather than identifying with it personally. We investigate the instinctual energies. We have strong survival and procreative instincts: hunger and thirst, the urge to protect ourselves, the need for safety. We all need to feel some kind of physical safety, which is a survival instinct; these are basic to the animal kingdom, not just humans. It gets more complicated because we identify with it, and judge it according to high standards and ideals. Then we become neurotic. It gets all over the place; we can’t do anything right. This is the complicated mess that we create in our lives and it’s very confusing.

Now is the time to understand that it needn’t be seen in this way. No matter how complicated things are, the practice is very simple. This is where we need a lot of patience, because when we’re complicated, we oftentimes lack patience with ourselves. We’ve got clever minds. We think very quickly and have strong passions, and it’s easy to get lost in all of this. It’s confusing for us because we don’t have any way out of it, we don’t know a way to transcend or to see it in perspective. In pointing to this centre point, to this still point, to the here-and-now, I’m pointing to the way of transcendence or the escape. Not escape by running away out of fear, but by means of the escape hatch that allows us to get perspective on the mess, on the confusion, on the complicated self that we have created and identify with.

It’s simple and uncomplicated. But if you start thinking about it, then you can make it very complicated with such thoughts as, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever realize nibbāna.’ But this is where trust comes in. If you’re aware that ‘Oh, I don’t know’ is a perception in the present, trust in that awareness. That’s all you need to know. It is what it is. We’re not even judging that perception. We’re not saying, ‘What a stupid perception.’ We’re not adding anything. The awareness of it, that’s what I’m pointing to.

Learn to trust in that awareness rather than in what the perception is saying. The perception might even be common sense in a way, but the attachment to it is where you get lost. ‘We should practise meditation. We should not be selfish and we should learn to be more disciplined and more responsible for our lives.’ That’s very good advice, but if I attach to that, what happens? I go back to thinking, ‘I’m not responsible enough, I’ve got to become more responsible and I shouldn’t be selfish. I’m too selfish and I shouldn’t be,’ and I’m back onto the turning wheel again. One gets intimidated even by the best advice. What to do? Trust in the awareness of it. The thought ‘I should be responsible’ is seen, and one’s relationship to it is no longer that of grasping. Maybe if that thought resonates as something to do, then be more responsible. It’s not a matter of denying, blotting out, condemning or believing, but of trusting in the attitude of attention and awareness rather than endlessly trying to sort it out on the turning wheel with all its complicated thoughts and habits, where you just get dizzy and totally confused.

The still point gives you perspective on the conditions, on the turning wheel, on the confusion, on the mess. It puts you into a relationship to it that is one of knowing it for what it is, rather than making a personal identity out of it. Then you can see that this knowing is your true nature – your real home – this pure state, pure consciousness, pure awareness. You are learning to remember that, to be that. It’s what you really are, rather than what you think you are according to the conditioning of your mind.

Link to the source of this article:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

identity

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Ajahn Sumedho

[…] We’ll sacrifice our life for an illusion, to try and protect our identities, our positions, our territories. We’re very territorial. We think England belongs to the English. When we take that apart, does this plot of land here say it’s England? When I do jongrom (walking meditation) outside, does the earth come up and say, ’You’re walking on me – England.’ It’s never said that! But I say I’m walking here in England – I’m the one who’s calling it England – and that is an identity, a conventional identity. We all agree to call this plot of land here ‘England’, but it’s not really that; it is what it is. Yet we’ll fight, torture and commit the most atrocious acts over territory, quibbling about just one inch of property on a border. The land doesn’t belong to anybody. Even if I own land legally – ‘This belongs to Ajahn Sumedho’ – it doesn’t really. That’s just a convention.

When we bind ourselves to these conventions and illusions, then of course we’re troubled because they are so unstable and not in line with Dhamma. We end up wasting our lives trying to increase this sense of identification, the sense of, ‘It’s mine, it belongs to me and I want to protect it. I want to hand it down to future generations.’ We go on and on like this, into future lives and the generations that follow. We create a whole realm of illusion, personality and identity with the perceptions that we create in our minds, and that arise and cease with no real core to them, no essence.

We can be very threatened when these illusions are threatened. I remember first questioning the reality of my personality. It scared me to death. When I started questioning it, I was not particularly overconfident or had high self-esteem. I have never been prone towards megalomania; usually the opposite, very self-critical – and yet I felt threatened when that security, that confidence in being this screwed-up personality, was being threatened. There is a sense of stability even with people who are identified with illnesses or negative things, like alcoholics. Being identified with some sort of mental disease like paranoia, schizophrenia or whatever, gives us a sense that we know what we are, and can justify why we are that way. We can say, ‘I can’t help the way I am. I’m a schizophrenic.’ That gives us permission to be a certain way. We gain confidence or stability when our identities are labelled and we all agree to look at each other in this way, in terms of this label, this perception.

So, you realize the kind of courage it takes to question, to allow the illusory world we have created to fall apart – such as with a nervous breakdown when the world falls apart. When the safety and confidence that we gain from that illusion starts cracking and falling apart, it’s very frightening. Yet within us there’s something that guides us through it. For example, what brings us into this monastic life? It’s some intuitive sense, a sense behind the sense, an intelligence behind all the knowledge and the cleverness of our minds. Yet we can’t claim it on a personal level. We always have to let go of the personal perceptions, because as soon as we claim them, we’re creating another illusion again. Instead of claiming, identifying or attaching, we begin to realize or recognize the way it is. This is the practice of awareness, of sati-sampajañña, of paying attention. In other words, it’s going to the centre point of our minds, to the Buddho position, ‘the one who knows.’ If you look at this statue of the Buddha here in the Temple, it’s a symbol, an image representing the human form at that still point.

There is this encouragement to practise what we call ‘meditation’. The word ‘meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practice, good or bad. But when I use this word, what I’m mainly using it for is that sense of centring, that sense of establishing, resting in the centre of the mind. The only way one can do that is to not try and think about or analyze it; you have to trust in just this simple act of attention, of awareness. It’s so simple and so direct that our complicated minds get confused. ‘What’s he talking about? I’ve never seen any still point. I’ve never found a still point in me. When I sit and meditate, there’s nothing still about it.’ But there’s an awareness of that. Even if you think you’ve never had a still point, or you’re a confused, messed-up character who can’t meditate, trust in the awareness of that very perception. That’s why I encourage you, whatever you think you are, to think it deliberately – really explore the kinds of perceptions you have of yourself, so that they’re not just habitually going through your mind and you’re either believing them or trying to get rid of them.

The more we try to get rid of our personalities, the more confused we get. If you assume that you’ve got to get rid of your personality in some way because it’s an illusion, then you’re caught in another illusion that ‘I’m someone who has a personality I’ve got to get rid of; I’m the personality that’s got to get rid of my personality.’ It doesn’t get anywhere – it’s ridiculous. But the practice is not a matter of getting rid of, but of knowing.

Be a personality then. Really intentionally be one; take it to absurdity. That’s a lot of fun. Take your personality to where it’s totally absurd and listen to it. Your relationship is then not one of identity but of recognizing that you’re creating this personality, this changing condition. I can’t create any kind of personal perception that lingers, that stays. There’s nothing I can create through my mental powers that has any staying power on a personal level. It’s all very illusory, very changeable, very ephemeral. However, there is that which can be aware of the personality as a construction. I deliberately think, ‘I am a screwed-up person who needs to meditate in order to become enlightened in the future.’ I’m deliberately thinking it but I’m also listening to it; I’m investigating it. I have created that perception. I have chosen to think that, and I can hear myself thinking it. I don’t create that which is aware and listens to perceptions. It’s not a creation. I create this perception that ‘I am a screwed-up person,’ – but not that which is aware of the perception.

You can investigate, and begin to know, the difference between awareness and thinking. What is the still point, the centre, the point that includes thinking? This kind of thinking is reflective. I’m just asking myself this question to bring attention to it. I’m not looking for somebody to give me an answer. But that’s a reflective question that clarifies my attention; it helps me to focus, to be aware. The more I pay attention and am aware, the more I recognize that in this still point there’s this resounding sound of silence. I didn’t create that. I can’t claim the sound of silence is some personal creation of mine, that it belongs to Ajahn Sumedho. It’s like trying to claim the air, the space: ‘All the space in the world belongs to me,’ that kind of ridiculous thing. You can’t create a person around it, you can only be. There is this sense of being this still point, resting, opening to and allowing the personality, the body, the emotional habits and thoughts that arise. Our relationship to them now is one of understanding or embracing rather than identifying.
Continued next week:  4 April 2024

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho, the Chapter titled Identity. This is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

two aspects of western buddhism

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These are selected excerpts from “The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nibbana” by Ajahn Pasano and Ajahn Amaro

1. Is Buddhism a negative teaching?

The word: ‘nothingness’ can sound like annihilation, like nihilism. But you can also emphasize the ‘thingness’ so that it becomes ‘no-thingness.’ So Nibbana is not a thing that you can find. It is the place of ‘no-thingness,’ a place of non-possession, a place of non-attachment. It is a place, as Ajahn Chah said, where you experience “the reality of non-grasping.”

In contemplating Buddhist terms, and many of the ways of speech employed in the text, it is important to bear a couple of things in mind. Firstly, it is a feature of the Buddha’s teaching, particularly in the Theravada scriptures, that the Truth and the way leading to it are often indicated by talking about what they are not rather than what they are. This mode of expression has a rough parallel in the classical Indian philosophy of the Upanisads, in what is known as the principle of ‘neti… neti,’ meaning ‘not this… not this,’ – it is the phrase through which the reality of appearances is rejected. In Christian theological language this approach, of referring to what things are not, is called an ‘apophatic method’, it is also known as the via negativa and has been used by a number of eminent Christians over the centuries. The Pali Canon posesses much of the same via negativa flavour and because of this, readers have often mistaken it for a nihilistic view on life. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it’s easy to see how the mistake could be made, particularly if one comes from a culture commited to life-affirmation, such as is commonly found in the West. The story has it that shortly after the Buddha’s enlightenment he was walking along a road through the Magadhan countryside, in the Ganges Valley, on his way to meet up with the five companions with whom he had practised austerities before going off alone, to seek the Truth in his own way. Along the road a wandering ascetic, Upaka by name, saw him approaching and was greatly struck by the Buddha’s appearance. Not only was he a warrior-noble prince with the regal bearing that came from his upbringing, he was also unusually tall, extraordinarily handsome, was dressed in the rag robes of the ascetic wanderers and he shone with a dazzling radiance. Upaka was moved to enquire: “Who are you friend? Your face is so clear and bright, your manner is awesome and serene. Surely you must have discovered some great truth – who is your teacher, friend and what is it that you have discovered?” The newly-awakened Buddha replied: “I am an Alltranscender, an All-knower. I have no teacher. In all the world I alone am fully enlightened. There is none who taught me this – I came to it through my own efforts.” “Do you mean to say that you claim to have won victory over birth and death?” “Indeed, friend I am a Victorious One; and now, in this world of the spiritually blind, I go to Benares to beat the drum of Deathlessness.” “Well, good for you friend,” said Upaka and, shaking his head as he went, he left by a different path.

The Buddha realized from Upaka’s departure that mere declaration of the Truth did not necessarily arouse faith, and was not effective in communicating it to others. So, by the time he reached the Deer Park outside of Benares and had met up with his former companions, he had adopted a much more analytical method (vibhajjavada). He began his first systematic teaching, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (The Discourse on the Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Truth), by explaining the raw truth of the spiritual disease (dukkha, ‘unsatisfactoriness, discontent, suffering’) and then worked through the cause of the disease (tanha, ‘craving’), the prognosis (yes, dukkha can indeed cease – nirodha), and finally outlined the medicine (the Noble Eightfold Path – magga).

This via negativa method is most clearly displayed in the Buddha’s second discourse, the Anattalakkhana Sutta (MV 1.6), also given in the Deer Park at Benares and the teaching which caused the five companions all to realize enlightenment, the liberation of the heart from all delusion and defilement. In this discourse the Buddha uses the search for the self (atta in Pali, atman in Skt) as his theme, and by using an analytical method he demonstrates that a ‘self cannot be found in relation to any of the factors of body or mind; he then states: “the wise noble disciple becomes dispassionate towards the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness.”

In this way, he states, the heart is liberated. This explanation implies that once we let go of what we’re not, the nature of what is Real becomes apparent – this was the realization that the Buddha had tried to communicate to Upaka when they met on the high road. And as that Reality is beyond description, it is most appropriate, and least misleading, to let it remain undescribed. This is the essence of the ‘way of negation’ and will be a repetitive theme throughout (this text).

 Secondly, throughout the Buddha’s teaching career of forty-five years, most of his attention was placed on offering descriptions of the path. If the goal was spoken of, it was usually in simple, general terms (e.g. at §1.5). However, one of the effects of having placed so much emphasis on the path, is that the Theravada tradition has tended to speak very little about the nature of the goal – thus often causing that goal, Nibbana, to disappear from view, or become impossibly vague in concept, or even to be denied as being realizable in this day and age. One of the aims of the book “The Island” is to collect many of the passages of the Pali Canon where the Buddha does indeed speak about the nature of the goal, elucidating this profound Truth and encouraging its realization.

2. No-self or not-self?

One of the first stumbling blocks in understanding Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn’t fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of karma and rebirth: If there’s no self, what experiences the results of karma and takes rebirth?

Second, it seems to negate the whole reason for the Buddha’s teachings to begin with: If there’s no self to benefit from the practice, then why bother? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali Canon you won’t find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer [i.e. §5.14].

When later asked why, he said that to answer either yes, there is a self, or no, there isn’t, would be to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus, the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers.

The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner’s court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don’t lead to the end of suffering and stress. The Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as “Do I exist?” or “Don’t I exist?” for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.

To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of ‘self and ‘other,’ he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. These truths aren’t assertions; they’re categories of experience. Rather than viewing these categories as pertaining to self or other, he said, we should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood.

If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not “Is there a self? What is my self?” but rather “Does holding onto this particular phenomenon cause stress and suffering? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it’s stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?” These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging – the residual sense of self-identification – that cause stress, until ultimately all traces of self- identification are gone and all that remains is limitless freedom.

“In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there’s the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what’s experiencing it, or about whether or not it’s a self? ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu, ‘Noble Strategy,’ pp 71-4

This explanation clearly points out that the anatta teaching is simply a means to an end. On a practical level it points to the root delusion, and what to do about it. Here are some of the Buddha’s words which both underscore the necessary process and also point out the joyful result of following that process to its completion.

Contemplation of unattractiveness of the body should be cultivated for the overcoming of sexual desire; loving-kindness should be cultivated for the overcoming of ill will; mindfulness of breathing should be cultivated for the cutting off of discursive thinking; contemplation of impermanence should be cultivated for the dispelling of the conceit ‘I am’ (asmi-mana). For when one perceives impermanence, Meghiya, the perception of not-self is established. With the perception of not-self, the conceit ‘I am’ is eliminated, and that is Nibbana here and now.” ~Ud4.1, A9.3 5.18) “Seclusion is happiness for one content, who knows the Dhamma, who has seen; “Friendship with the world is happiness for those restrained toward al beings; “beings; “Dispassion amidst the world is happiness for those who have let go of sense desires; “But the end of the conceit ‘I am’ that’s the greatest happiness of all.” ~ Ud 2.1

This text ends with a few words on the closely related area of attachment to ‘being’ and ‘non-being.’ The average reader might well believe that such issues are not the burning concerns of an average day, and only of tangential or academic interest. However, there are numerous subtle ways in which our hearts incline towards the longing to be someone, something, and then towards the longing not to be, not to feel, not to experience.

Does this sound at all familiar? Probably thousands of times a day the heart of the average person tilts towards bhava-tanha or vibhava-tanha (the former is defined as the yearning to be, to become; the latter embodying the yearning to switch off, to annihilate experience). It is in the light of this reality that these teachings take on great meaning and practical value – they describe the habits of the heart which are deeply ingrained and which continually drive the wheel of birth and death: enthusiasm and disappointment, the return of the nemesis we have tried to escape, union and bereavement, the results of impulses to “Just get rid of this…” If we use the reflective capacity of the mind, we begin to see how these teachings map the terrain of such habits quite precisely, and point the way to attitudes which will break the imprisoning spell such habits have woven.

This is a free Dhamma publication, available as PDF, ePUB or MOBI:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/451-the-island-an-anthology-of-the-buddhas-teachings-on-nibbana

consciousness is our real home

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Ajahn Sumedho
[The second part of last week’s post titled ‘Consciousness’ taken from a chapter in ‘Intuitive Awareness’ by Ajahn Sumedho]

Buddha-Dhamma, when you look at it, is not a cultural teaching. It’s not about Indian culture or civilization. It’s about the natural laws we live with, the arising and ceasing of phenomena. Dhamma teachings are pointing to the way things are – things that aren’t bound by cultural limitations. We talk about anicca, dukkha, anattā. That’s not Indian philosophy or culture; these are things to be realized. You are not operating from some basic belief system that’s cultural. The Buddha’s emphasis is on waking up, on paying attention rather than on grasping some doctrinal position. This is why many of us can relate to it, because we’re not trying to become Indians or convert to some religious doctrine that came out of India.

The Buddha awakened to the way it is, to the natural law. So, when we are exploring consciousness, these teachings like the five khandhas are skilful or expedient means in order to explore and examine our experience. They are not, ‘You have got to believe in the five khandhas and believe that there is no self. You cannot believe in God any more. To be a Buddhist you have to believe that there is no God.’ There are Buddhists who do have this mentality. They want to make doctrinal positions about being Buddhist. To me that teaching is not based on a doctrine, but on this encouragement to awaken. You are starting from here and now, from awakened attention rather than from trying to prove that the Buddha actually lived. Somebody might say, ‘Maybe there was never any Buddha; maybe it was just a myth,’ but it doesn’t matter because we don’t need to prove that Gotama Buddha actually lived; that’s not the issue. We are not trying to prove historical facts, but to recognize that what we are actually experiencing now is like this.

When we allow ourselves just to rest in conscious awareness, this is a natural state; it’s not created. It’s not a refined conditioning that we are after, where we are moving from coarser conditions to increasingly more refined ones, where we experience a bliss and tranquillity that comes from refining conscious experience. That is very dependent. This world, this conscious realm that we are a part of, includes the coarse and the refined.

This is not a refined realm that we are experiencing. In terms of human or planetary life, this is not a devaloka or a brahmaloka, those divine or highest celestial realms which are more refined. This is a coarse realm where we run the gamut from that which is coarse to that which is refined. We have got to deal with the realities of a physical body, which is quite a coarse condition. In deva realms they do not have physical bodies, they have ethereal ones. We would all like to have ethereal bodies, made out of ether rather than all these slimy things that go on inside our bodies – bones, pus and blood, all of these yucky conditions that we have to live with. To defecate every day – devatās don’t have to do things like that. Sometimes we like to create the illusion that we are devatās. We don’t like these functions; we like privacy. We don’t want people to notice, because the physical conditions that we are living with are actually pretty coarse. But consciousness includes all that, all the gradations from the coarse to the most refined.

Another thing to notice is compulsive feelings of having to do something, having to get something that you don’t have, having to attain something or get rid of your defilements. When you’re trusting in ‘your real home’, then you can have perspective on this conditioning of the emotions. For example, we come from competitive goal-oriented societies, so we’re very much programmed to always feel that there is something that we have got to do. That we’re always lacking something and we have got to find out what it is, and we’ve got to get it. Or that we have got to get rid of our weaknesses, faults and bad habits. Notice that this attitude is just something that arises and ceases. It’s the competitive world, the world of a self.

We can always see ourselves in terms of what’s wrong with us as a person. As a person there are always so many flaws and inadequacies. There is no perfect personality that I have ever noticed. Personality is all over the place; some of it is all right and some of it is really wacky. There is no personality you can take refuge in. You are never going to make yourself into a perfect personality. So, when you are judging yourself on a personal level, there seem to be so many problems, inadequacies, flaws and weaknesses. Maybe you are comparing yourself to some ideal person, some unselfish and superlative personality. That which is aware of personality is not personal. You can be aware of the personality as a mental object. The conditions for personality arise and cease. Suddenly you can find yourself feeling very insecure or acting very childish because the conditions for that personality have arisen.

When my parents were alive, I went to stay with them for about three weeks, because they were really sick. I was abbot of Amaravati, a fifty-five-year-old Ajahn Sumedho going home and living in the same little house with my mother and father. It brought up all kinds of childish emotions, because the conditions were there for that. We were all born through our parents, and our memories and connections are from infancy onwards. A lot of the conditions that arise in families are conditions for feeling like a child again – even when you’re a fifty-five-year-old Buddhist monk and abbot of a monastery! [Note, at the time of publication Ajahn Sumedho is 89.] My mother and father would easily go back to seeing me as a child. Rationally they could see, ‘He’s a middle-aged man,’ but they would still sometimes act like I was their child. Then I would feel this rebelliousness and adolescent kind of resentment about being treated like a child. So don’t be surprised at some of the emotional states that arise. Throughout your life, as you get old, kamma ripens and then these conditions appear in consciousness. Don’t despair if you find yourself feeling very childish at fifty years old. Just be aware of that for what it is. It is what it is. The conditions for that particular emotion are present, so then it becomes conscious. Your refuge is in this awareness rather than in trying to make yourself into an ideal man or woman – mature, responsible, capable, successful, ‘normal’ and all the rest – these are the ideals.

Here at Amaravati, I am not looked at as a child. I’m the oldest person here! You may see me in terms of a father figure, because an old man like me brings out the sense of authority. I’m an authority figure, a patriarch, a father figure, a male figure – a grandfatherly figure to some of you. It’s interesting to see this state when the conditions are there. Rationally you can say, ‘He’s not my father,’ but emotionally you may feel like that, acting towards me like I’m a father. It’s an emotional habit. When the conditions for that kind of male authority figure are present, then this is what you are feeling, it’s like this. There is nothing wrong with it, just notice it’s the way it is. Trust your refuge in this awareness, not in some idea that you shouldn’t project fatherly images onto me, or that you shouldn’t feel disempowered by a male authority figure and things like this. If you feel disempowered by me, then simply recognize it as a condition that has arisen, rather than blaming me or blaming yourself, because then you are back into the world you are creating – your personal world – and believing in that as your reality.

I used to get really angry when women would get bossy. When any woman would show any kind of bossiness, I would feel rage. I wondered why even a tone of voice would make me so upset, why I could get so enraged over a bossy attitude. I could see it was like when I was a boy, trying to get my way against my mother. If that has not yet been fully resolved, if the conditions for that rage are present, then this is what will arise. It’s through “awareness of it that you resolve it. As you understand it and see it in terms of what it is, then you can resolve it or let it go, so that you are not just stuck with the same old reactions all the time.

Our refuge is in this awareness, rather than in trying to sustain refined experiences in consciousness as our refuge, because you can’t do that. Maybe you can learn to increase your experience of refinement through developing skilful means, but inevitably you have to allow the coarse to manifest, to be a part of your conscious experience. Resting in this conscious awareness is referred to as ‘coming home’ or ‘our real home.’ It’s a place to rest, a home. The idea of a home is a place where you belong. You are no longer a foreigner or an alien. You begin to recognize this through a sense of relief, of just being home at last, of not being a stranger, a wanderer out in the wilderness. Then the world of Ajahn Sumedho arises and it’s like I’m not at home anymore, because Ajahn Sumedho is an alien, a stranger. He never feels quite at home anywhere. Am I American now? Am I British or am I Thai? Where do I feel at home as Ajahn Sumedho? I don’t even know what nationality I am anymore, or where I feel most at home. I feel more at home here than in America because I’ve lived here for so long. In Thailand I feel at home because it’s a paradise for Buddhist monks and they treat you so well, but still you have to get visas and you’re always a phra farang (foreign monk). Here in England, no matter how many years I have lived here, to most people I am still an American. But when I go back to America, I don’t know what I am; people say: ‘You don’t look like an American anymore. You’ve got a funny accent; we don’t know where you are from!’ That’s the world that is created. When all that drops away, what’s left is our real home.

Source:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/media/books/Intuitive_Awareness_web-edition_1.2_2017.pdf

consciousness

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Ajahn Sumedho

In terms of this moment, right now, this is consciousness. We are reading words on a page – pure consciousness before you start thinking. Just make a note of this: consciousness is like this. I am reading, I am with this present moment, being present, being here now. I’m taking the word consciousness and making a mental note: ‘consciousness is like this.’ It’s where thought, feeling and emotion arise. When we are unconscious, we don’t feel, we don’t think. Consciousness, then, is like the field that allows thought, memory, emotion and feeling to appear and disappear.

Consciousness is not personal. For something to become personal you have to make a claim to it: ‘I am a conscious person.’ But there’s just awareness, this entrance into noting the present, and at this moment consciousness is like this. Then one can notice the sound of silence, the sense of sustaining, being able to rest in a natural state of consciousness that is non-personal and non-attached. Noting this is like informing or educating oneself to the way it is. When we are born, consciousness within this separate form starts operating. A new-born baby is conscious, yet it doesn’t have a concept of itself being male or female or anything like that. Those are conditions we acquire after birth.

This is a conscious realm. We might think of a universal consciousness, and consciousness as it is used in the five khandhas: rūpa (form), vedanā (feeling), saññā (perception), saṅkhārā (mental formations), and viññāṇa (sense-consciousness). But there is also this consciousness which is unattached, unlimited, Deathless. In two places in the Tipiṭaka, there is reference to viññāṇaṁ anidassanaṁ anantaṁ sabbato pabhaṁ – a mouthful of words that point to this state of natural consciousness, this reality. For myself, I find it very useful to clearly note: ‘Consciousness is like this.’ If I start thinking about it, then I want to define it: ‘Is there an immortal consciousness?’ Or we want to make it into a metaphysical doctrine or just deny it, saying, ‘Consciousness is anicca, dukkha, anattā.’ We want to pin it down or define it either as impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self, or raise it up as something we hold to as a metaphysical position. But we are not interested in proclaiming metaphysical doctrines, or in limiting ourselves to an interpretation that we may have acquired through this tradition. Instead, we are trying to explore consciousness in terms of experience. This is Ajahn Chah’s pen paccattaṁ – that is, ‘something that you realize for yourself.’ What I am saying now is an exploration. I’m not trying to convince you or convert you to ‘my viewpoint.’

Consciousness is like this. Right now, there is definitely consciousness. There is alertness and awareness. Then conditions arise and cease. If you sustain and rest in consciousness, unattached, not trying to do anything, find anything or become anything, but just relax and trust, then things arise. Suddenly you may be aware of a physical feeling, a memory or an emotion. That memory or sensation becomes conscious, then it ceases. Consciousness is like a vehicle; it’s the way things are.

Is consciousness something to do with the brain? We tend to think of it as some kind of mental state that depends on the brain. The attitude of Western scientists is that consciousness is in the brain. But the more you explore it with sati-sampajañña, you see that the brain, the nervous system, the whole psychophysical formation arises in this consciousness; it is imbued with this consciousness. That is why we can be aware of the body and reflect on the four postures – sitting, standing, walking and lying down. Being aware of sitting as it is being experienced now, you are not limited to something that is in the brain, but the body is in consciousness. You are aware of the whole body in the experience of sitting.

This consciousness is not personal. It’s not consciousness in my head and then consciousness in your head. Each of us has our own conscious experience going on. But is this consciousness the thing that unites us? Is it our ‘oneness’? I’m just questioning; there are different ways of looking at it. When we let go of the differences – ‘I am Ajahn Sumedho and you are this person’ – when we let go of these identities and attachments, then consciousness is still functioning. It’s pure. It has no quality of being personal, and no condition of being male or female. You can’t put a quality into it. It’s like this.

When we begin to recognize that which binds us together, that our common ground is consciousness, then we see this is universal. When we spread mettā to a billion Chinese over in China, maybe it’s not just sentimentality and nice thoughts, maybe there is power there. I don’t know myself; I am questioning. I am not going to limit myself to a particular viewpoint that has been conditioned by my cultural background, because most of that is pretty flawed anyway. I do not find my cultural conditioning very dependable.

Sometimes Theravada Buddhism can come across as annihilationism. You get into this ‘no soul, no God, no self’ fixation, this attachment to a view. Or are the Buddha’s teachings there to be investigated and explored? We are not trying to confirm somebody’s view about the Pali Canon, but rather we use the Pali Canon to explore our own experience. It’s a different way of looking at it. If we investigate this a lot, we begin to see the difference between pure consciousness and when self arises. It’s not hazy or fuzzy, ‘Is there Self now?’ It’s a clear knowing.

So, then the self arises. I start thinking about myself, my feelings, my memories, my past, my fears and desires, and the whole world arises around ‘Ajahn Sumedho.’ It takes off into orbit – my views, my feelings and my opinions. I can get caught into that world, that view of ‘me’ that arises in consciousness. But if I know that, then my refuge is no longer in being a person, I’m not taking refuge in being a personality or my views and opinions. Then I can let go; the world of Ajahn Sumedho ends. When the world ends, what remains is the anidassana viññāṇa – this primal, non-discriminative consciousness. It’s still operating. It doesn’t mean Ajahn Sumedho dies and the world ends, or that I’m unconscious.

Talking about the end of the world, I remember somebody getting very frightened by this, saying, ‘Buddhists are just practising meditation to see the end of the world. They really want to destroy the world. They hate the world and they want to see it end’ – this kind of panic reaction. To us the world is seen in physical terms – this planet, the world of continents and oceans, North Pole and South Pole. But in Buddha-Dhamma, the ‘world’ is the world we create in consciousness. That’s why we can be living in different worlds. The world of Ajahn Sumedho is not going to be the same as the world you create, but that world arises and ceases. That which is aware of the world arising and ceasing transcends the world. It’s lokuttara, transcendent, rather than lokiya, worldly.

When we are born into physical birth, we have consciousness within a separate form. This point of consciousness starts operating, and then we acquire the sense of ourselves through our mothers and fathers and cultural background. We acquire different values or sense of ourself as a person that’s based on avijjā, not on Dhamma – based on views, opinions and preferences that cultures have. That’s why there can be endless problems around different cultural attitudes. As with living in a multicultural community like this, it’s easy to misunderstand each other because we’re conditioned in different ways of looking at ourselves and the world around us. But remember that cultural conditioning comes out of avijjā, ignorance of Dhamma. So, what we are doing now is informing consciousness with paññā – which is a universal wisdom rather than a cultural philosophy.

[Continued next week 14 March 2024]
Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho, the Chapter titled Consciousness. This is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

https://archive.org/details/intuitiveaware00sumearch


wise kindness

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Ajahn Amaro

Excerpts from “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” Chapter 5, a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link at the end of the text.

I don’t like to teach loving-kindness meditation as a separate feature of spiritual practice. I find that it’s far more skilful to cultivate loving-kindness as a background theme, as a kind and loving presence that informs and infuses every effort that is made in our spiritual training. The way that we pick up any aspect of the training needs to have this quality of loving-kindness in it. As a preface to that, it’s also important to understand that loving everything doesn’t mean we have to like everything. Sometimes it’s misunderstood that to have lovingkindness we need to attempt to make ourselves like everything. For instance, we may try to convince ourselves that we like pain, grief, unrequited love, an overdraft, decaying sense faculties, or an ex who continues to haunt us. This is a misguided way of practicing loving-kindness.

It is better understood as “the heart that does not dwell in aversion.” Not dwelling in aversion towards anything, even our enemies. Someone quoted me a passage in one of the Dalai Lama’s recent books where he was talking about the Chinese. He referred to them as “my friends, the enemy.” So loving-kindness is that quality whereby we are able to refrain from piling on aversion, even toward that which is bitter, painful, ugly, cruel, and harmful. It’s a matter of realising that place in our hearts where we know that this too has its role in nature. Yes, including the whole spectrum of the seemingly unlikable, the repulsive, and the utterly despicable.

Loving-kindness is the quality of allowing and accepting these things as part of the whole picture. It’s not about saying we approve of everything or we think things like torture, deceit, and malice are good. It’s about accepting that they exist and fully acknowledging that they are a part of life’s panorama. Here they are. When we establish loving acceptance as a basis for practice, then whatever we’re dealing with in terms of our own minds and our world, there’s the fundamental quality of accord. And for myself, I find that that needs to be there whether I’m doing concentration practice, insight practice, or the nonduality practice of Dzogchen—completely letting go of everything in the subjective and the objective realms. We need to recognise that there is no enemy. There is Dharma. There is no them or that or it. It all belongs. Fundamentally, everything belongs and has its place in nature.

The brahma-vihāras chant that we do in English appears in the Buddha’s teaching called “The Simile of the Saw.” What he teaches there is that, “If you were captured by bandits and they were sawing your body into pieces, limb by limb with a twohanded saw, anyone who gave rise to a thought of aversion towards them on account of that would not be practicing my teaching.” (M 21.20)

I realize that some people find this an incredibly daunting and unrealistic teaching. But to me it is actually extremely helpful and skilful. It’s saying that hatred cannot be in accord with Dharma and is therefore never justified.

The Buddha used an extreme, almost absurd example where it would seem utterly reasonable to feel some aversion toward those sawing you up bit by bit. One would think a little irritation, just a snippet of negativity here or there, would be quite allowable. But the Buddha didn’t say that, did he? He said, “Not one hair’s tip of aversion is appropriate.” As soon as the heart lurches into, “No, this doesn’t belong, this shouldn’t be. You are evil. Why me?” then the Dharma has been obscured, lost. That’s the fact. Something in us may revolt, but the heart knows it’s true. Any dwelling in aversion points it out very clearly, and because of that, the aversion is a unambiguous sign that “the Dharma has been lost.”

As soon as we find ourselves judging our own minds or the people around us with harshness, cultivating justifiable hatred for the government or our thinking minds or our erratic emotions or our damaged lives, there’s no vision of reality; it’s obscured. The attitude is not in accord with truth. So that hatred, that aversion becomes a sign for us that we’ve lost the Path. This standard of training described by the Buddha may seem totally impractical, but it is doable. I think it’s helpful to recognise this because what we think we’re capable of is very different from what we actually are capable of. We might think, “I could never do that. That’s impossible for me.” Yet I tell you, it is possible. That potential is there for all of us. And when we find that quality of total acceptance and absolute non-aversion, where there’s kindness and compassion, then there’s a tremendous quality of ease and release, a real non-discrimination at last. For what kind of wisdom are we developing if it packs up and departs as soon as the going gets rough—as soon as the weather gets too hot, the “wrong” person is put in charge, or the body gets sick and uncomfortable?

A sincere spirit of loving-kindness is the most challenging thing to establish in the face of extreme bitterness and pain because to do so requires finding spaciousness around these experiences. This is where the heart most easily contracts and impacts itself. But we can pick up that quality and say, “Yes, this too is part of nature. This too is just the way it is.” Then, at that moment, there’s an expansion around it. We feel the space of emptiness that surrounds and pervades it and we see the whole thing is transparent. No matter how dense and real the feeling of “I and me and mine” is in that holding, we see in that spaciousness that not only is there space around it, but there is also light coming through.

Link to the source:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

compassionate intention

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Ajahn Amaro

Continued selected excerpts from Chapter 5, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link at the end of the text.

I was a very zealous young monk. And, although my mind was often extremely busy and all over the place, after three or four years of monastic training, I found that meditation came quite easily to me and that I could attain quite strong states of concentration. This was also the early years of our community in England, when Ajahn Sumedho would be giving two or three Dharma talks a day and it seemed like there was a constant stream of high wisdom. It was a very inspired time. There was a feeling that enlightenment was just so close, that it was an obvious reality. It was just a matter of cutting through the last few defilements and, boom! It would all be there.

We developed a tradition of having a winter retreat during the cold, dark months of January and February. About three weeks into one of these early retreats, I was working very diligently and was extremely focused on the meditation. I wasn’t talking to anyone or looking at anything. Every lunar quarter we would have an all-night meditation vigil. This was the full moon in January. I was really charged up and was convinced, “Okay, tonight’s the night.” It was a crystal-clear evening in the middle of an English winter. There were brilliant stars in the sky, and the full moon was blazing brightly. I really had the juice going. We came to the evening sitting, did the chanting, listened to the Dharma talk, and so forth, and then, once those were over, the rest of the night was open—just walking and sitting meditation, as one chose.

So, I’m sitting there with a very bright and clear mind and this thought keeps floating in, “Any minute now, any second now.” We all know that one: “Left a bit, right a bit, okay, now relax a bit, straighten up a bit, looking good, okay, hold steady, don’t do anything, all right, all right.” It’s very familiar terrain to everyone, I’m sure.

This was going on for hours. My mind was getting more and more energised, brighter and brighter, cutting through defilements and obscurations left and right. The clues were getting more and more prolific, like: “Something big is about to happen.” At about two in the morning, noises began to filter into my consciousness: thump, thump, thump, rumble, rumble, rumble, doors opening and closing, heavy footsteps in the hallway. I thought, “Shoes in the hallway? Who’s wearing shoes in the hallway?” Thump, thump. “What’s going on out there?” As you can tell, there was a little interference to my enlightenment program. But I decided just to ignore it, telling myself, “It’s only a noise [humming]. Just me and the moon humming our way to nibbāna.” Even though I tried my best to ignore the noise, I then noticed there was a presence in front of me. I opened my eyes. One of the monks was leaning down and saying, “Um, could you come outside for a moment?” And my first thought was, “What do you mean, ‘come outside’? This is my big night. I’m busy.” I resisted the impulse to act out my thoughts, left the room, and found policemen in the hall. “Police? What’s going on here?”

What had transpired was that one of the novices, a very erratic young man called Robert, had got himself into some trouble. All the meditation during the winter retreat, coupled with never having done that kind of concentrated practice before, could send many people to the wrong side of the border. Young Robert not only had gone over the border but had traveled many miles. He also had emptied the petty cash box before leaving. Down at the local pub, Robert had bought everybody drinks and was discoursing to the entire assembly. Because he was in a slightly crazy but hyperlucid state, he also found he now could read people’s minds. He was eyeballing people in the pub and saying, “You’re doing this and you’re thinking that; I know what you’re up to.” So, people were seriously freaking out. Remember, this was England, and English village life really isn’t ready for shaven-headed young men in white coming into the sanctity of the local pub, offering gifts, and revealing people’s inner secrets. The English really are not very good at revealing secrets in the best of times. But to have someone behave so strangely and to divulge people’s thoughts was distinctly unacceptable. So, they called the law. The police, with equally great English common sense and compassion, understood this fellow was a little bit off and brought him back to the monastery. By then he really had lost it. He started raving and ranting, saying he wanted to kill himself.

The monk standing above me said: “Robert’s in deep trouble. He’s in a very weird state and wants to throw himself in the lake. Can you go help him? You’re the only one who can do it.” This was true. Because I was one of the most junior members of the Sangha, like him, I had been quite close to this novice and was one of the few people in the community who could relate to him at all.

At the time, Robert was living in a kutī in the forest. Most of the community lived either in the main house or at the nuns’ cottage, and the kutī in the forest was about a half-hour walk away. Part of my mind was going, “ut, but, but, look, this is my big “enlightenment night.” And so, my first impulse was to say, “Not tonight.” But then something in me said, “Don’t be stupid, go, you have no choice.” So, they loaded me up with thermoses of hot chocolate, candies, and other allowable goodies that monastics can have at that hour, and I went charging up to the woods. To cut a long story short, I spent the next three hours or so in his company drinking tea and cocoa and trying to talk him down. I let him talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Finally, he exhausted himself, and around dawn he wanted to sleep. I realised he was okay and knew he was not going to do anything stupid. So, I left him and set off back to the house.

I was charging down the hill when I suddenly thought, “What’s the hurry? Why am I racing?” I slowed down and slowed down and finally I just stopped and looked up. There was the full moon setting on the other side of the lake. And then, all of the voices that had been going on in my mind during the first part of the night started coming back to me: “Any minute now. This is my big night. I’m really going places.” And it also came to me that, throughout that entire scenario, I hadn’t for one second thought about anyone but me—me and my enlightenment program, me awakening, me getting liberated. I realised I hadn’t had a vestige of concern for practicing for anyone else’s benefit. I felt about this small. [Holds finger and thumb a quarter inch apart.] How could I have been so incredibly stupid?

Just through having been in the presence of one suffering being, I could now see how my attention while meditating had shrunk so much that all other beings had been completely shut out. What started with a good intention—wanting to develop spiritually and be liberated, which seemed like the finest thing anyone could do with a life—had narrowed, narrowed, and narrowed until it became a matter of me winning the big prize. The incredibly shallow motivation of my practice was revealed. I wondered, “What was all that effort really for?”

It then struck me deeply how important the altruistic principle is. For even though one might be doing a lot of inner work and developing very good qualities and skilful means, that kind of neglect of others undermines the true purpose of our practice. Other beings aren’t just a token reference. Our community used to chant the “Sharing of Blessings” every day, and it was only after this incident that I realised, “Oh, real people really suffering. Oh, right, real people . . . oh.”

Having been so close to Robert when my mind was in a very alert and sensitive state, this notion of practicing for the benefit of all beings really sank in. From that time on, I started paying a lot more attention to the whole element of altruism and to consciously bringing in a concern for other beings. This wasn’t just a concept. I really internalized it.

At that time, many of the Mahāyāna teachings started to make considerably more sense to me. I saw how that narrowing emphasis on enlightenment for the individual had become one of the driving spirits behind what I was doing. Through that “personal enlightenment” perspective, the mind naturally starts to drift towards a neglect of the greater picture.

Click on this link for the source:
https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain