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

cessation (part 2)

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By Ajahn Amaro
The concept of cessation is sometimes put forth as some event that we’re all seeking, where all experience will vanish and then we’ll be fine. A story from the time of the Buddha might help to expand our understanding of what cessation means. One night while the Buddha was meditating, a brilliant and beautiful devatā named Rohitassa appeared in front of him. He told the Buddha, “When I was a human being, I was a spiritual seeker of great psychic power, a sky walker. Even though I journeyed for 100 years to reach the end of the world, with great determination and resolution, I could not come to the end of the world. I died on the journey before I had found it. So, can you tell me, is it possible to journey to the end of the world?

And the Buddha replied, “It is not possible to reach the end of the world by walking, but I also tell you that unless you reach the end of the world, you will not reach the end of suffering.” Rohitassa was a bit puzzled and said, “Please explain this to me, Venerable Sir.” The Buddha replied, “In this very fathomlong body is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.” (A 4.45, S 2.26) The world, “loka,” means the world as we experience it through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, emotion, feeling. That’s what “the world” is—my world, your world. It’s not the abstracted, geographical planet, universe-type world. It’s the direct experience of the planet, the people, and the cosmos. Here is the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.

He said that as long as we create “me and my experience”— “me in here” and “the world out there”—we’re stuck in the world of subject and object. Then there is dukkha. And the way leading to the cessation of that duality is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Geographically, it is impossible to journey to the end of the world. It’s only when we come to the cessation of the world, which literally means the cessation of its otherness, its thingness, will we reach the end of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. When we stop creating sense objects as absolute realities and stop seeing thoughts and feelings as solid things, there is cessation.

To see that the world is within our minds is one way of working with these principles. The whole universe is embraced when we realize that it’s happening within our minds. And in that moment when we recognise that it all happens here, it ceases. Its thingness ceases, its otherness ceases. Its substantiality ceases.

This is just one way of talking and thinking about it. But I find this brings us much closer to the truth, because in that respect, it’s held in check. It’s known. But there’s also the quality of its emptiness. Its insubstantiality is known. We’re not imputing solidity to it, a reality that it doesn’t possess. We’re just looking directly at the world, knowing it fully and completely.

So, what happens when the world ceases? I remember one time Ajahn Sumedho was giving a talk about this same subject. He said, “Now I’m going to make the world completely disappear. I’m going to make the world come to an end.” He just sat there and said: “Okay, are you ready? . . . The world just ended. . . Do you want me to bring it back? Okay. . . welcome back.”

Nothing was apparent from the outside. It all happens internally. When we stop creating the world, we stop creating each other. We stop imputing the sense of solidity that creates a sense of separation. Yet we do not shut off the senses in any way. Actually, we shed the veneer, the films of confusion, of opinion, of judgment, of our conditioning, so that we can see the way things really are. At that moment, dukkha ceases. This is what we can call the experience of rigpa. There is knowing. There is liberation and freedom. There is no dukkha.


Continued next week: 22 February 2024

Excerpts from Chapter 4, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

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

cessation (part 1)

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By Ajahn Amaro

The translation of terms can be very interesting, especially out on the borders where words expire. I remember years ago looking in the glossary of a collection of Vedanta teachings. Where the Sanskrit had a one-word term, the English explanation was a paragraph long. In refined areas of consciousness, English is pretty impoverished. Our language is great at emotions. We’ve got scads of words for every shade of feeling. But for the fine details of the inner reaches of consciousness, it’s hard to find words that really give an accurate and complete picture and that do not cause us to lose our way.”

Attending to the Deathless

In the Theravāda teachings, one of the ways the Buddha talked about how to be liberated is very similar to a central principle of Dzogchen. As far as I can gather, both traditions emphasise that at a certain point we need to let go of everything and awaken to the presence of the Dharma. Even the most skilful states must not be clung to. This principle is translated in various ways, but the one that feels most accurate is “attending to the deathless.” In Pali, that last word is “amatadhātu.”

A great passage in the suttas (A 3.128) presents an exchange between two of the Buddha’s elder monks. Venerable Sāriputta is the Buddha’s chief disciple, the one most eminent in wisdom and also in meditative accomplishments. Although he had no psychic powers whatsoever, he was the grand master of meditators. The other elder disciple of the Buddha, Venerable Anuruddha, had spectacular psychic powers. He was the one most blessed with “the divine eye”; he could see into all different realms.

The two disciples were an interesting mix. Sāriputta’s weakness was Anuruddha’s great gift. Anyway, shortly before his enlightenment, Anuruddha came to Sāriputta and said, “With the divine eye purified and perfected I can see the entire 10,000- fold universal system. My meditation is firmly established; my mindfulness is steady as a rock. I have unremitting energy, and the body is totally relaxed and calm. And yet still my heart is not free from the outflows and confusions. What am I getting wrong?”

Sāriputta replied, “Friend, your ability to see into the 10,000- fold universal system is connected to your conceit. Your persistent energy, your sharp mindfulness, your physical calm and “your one-pointedness of mind have to do with your restlessness. And the fact that you still have not released the heart from the āsavas and defilements is tied up with your anxiety. It would be good, friend, if rather than occupying yourself with these concerns, you turned your attention to the deathless element.” (By the way, the Pali Canon has a lot of humor in it like this, although it’s rather similar to English humor and sometimes is easy to miss.) So, of course, Anuruddha said, “Thank you very much,” and off he went. Shortly thereafter, he realised complete enlightenment. This was very understated humor.

The point of their discussion, however, is really quite serious. As long as we are saying, “Look at how complicated my problems are” or “Look at my powers of concentration,” we will stay stuck in samsāra. In essence, Sāriputta told his colleague, “You’re so busy with all of the doingness and the effects that come from that, so busy with all of these proliferations, you’ll never be free. You’re looking in the wrong direction. You’re heading out, looking at the meditation object out there, the 10,000-fold universal system out there. Just shift your view to the context of experience and attend to the deathless element instead.”

All it took was a slight shift of focus for Anuruddha to realize: “It’s not just a matter of all the fascinating objects or all the noble stuff I have been doing—that’s all conditioned, born, compounded, and deathbound. The timeless Dharma is being missed. Look within, look more broadly. Attend to the deathless.”

There are also a few places in the suttas (e.g., M 64.9 and A 9.36) where the Buddha talked about the same process with respect to development of concentration and meditative absorption. He even made the point that, when the mind is in first jhāna, second jhāna, third jhāna, all the way out to the higher formless jhānas, we can look at those states and recognise all of them as being conditioned and dependent. This, he said, is the true development of wisdom: the mindfulness to recognise the conditioned nature of a state, to turn away from it, and to attend to the deathless, even while the state is still around. When the mind is concentrated and very pure and bright, we can recognise that state as conditioned, dependent, alien, or something that is void, empty. There is the presence of mind to reflect on the truth that: All of this is conditioned and thus gross, but there is the deathless element. And in inclining toward the deathless element, the heart is released.

In a way it is like looking at a picture. Normally the attention goes to the figure in a picture and not the background. Or imagine being in a room with someone who is sitting in a chair. When you look across the room you would probably not attend to the space in front of or beside that person. Your attention would go to the figure in the chair, right? Similarly, if you’ve ever painted a picture or a wall, there’s usually one spot where there’s a glitch or a smudge. So where does the eye go when you look at the wall? It beams straight in on the flaw. In exactly the same way, our perceptual systems are geared to aim for the figure, not the ground. Even if an object looks like the ground—such as limitless light, for example—we still need to know how to turn back from that object.

Incidentally, this is why in Buddhist meditation circles there’s often a warning about deep states of absorption. When one is in one, it can be very difficult to develop insight—much more so than when the mind is somewhat less intensely concentrated. The absorption state is such a good facsimile of liberation that it feels like the real gold. So, we think: “It’s here, why bother going any further? This is really good.” We get tricked and, as a result, we miss the opportunity to turn away and attend to the deathless.

In cosmological terms, the best place for liberation is in the human realm. There’s a good mixture of suffering and bliss, happiness and unhappiness here. If we are off in the deva realms, it’s difficult to become liberated because it’s like being at an ongoing party. And we don’t even have to clean up afterwards. We just hang out in the Nandana Grove. Devas drop grapes in our mouths as we waft around with flocks of adoring beings of our favorite gender floating in close proximity. And, of course, there’s not much competition; you’re always the star of the show in those places. Up in the brahma realms it’s even worse. Who is going to come back down to grubby old earth and deal with tax returns and building permits?

This cosmology is a reflection of our internal world. Thus, the brahma realms are the equivalent of formless states of absorption. One of the great meditation masters of Thailand, Venerable Ajahn Tate, was such an adept at concentration that, as soon as he sat down to meditate, he would go straight into arūpa-jhāna, formless states of absorption. It took him 12 years after he met his teacher, Venerable Ajahn Mun, to train himself not to do that and to keep his concentration at a level where he could develop insight. In those formless states, it is just so nice. It’s easy to ask: “What’s the point of cultivating wise reflection or investigating the nature of experience? The experience itself is so seamlessly delicious, why bother?” The reason we bother is that those are not dependable states. They are unreliable and they are not ours. Probably not many people have the problem of getting stuck in arūpa-jhāna. Nonetheless, it is helpful to understand why these principles are discussed and emphasised.

This gesture of attending to the deathless is thus a core spiritual practice but not a complicated one. We simply withdraw our attention from the objects of the mind and incline the attention towards the deathless, the unborn. This is not a massive reconstruction program. It’s not like we have to do a whole lot. It’s very simple and natural. We relax and notice that which has been here all along, like noticing the space in a room. We don’t notice space, because it doesn’t grab our attention, it isn’t exciting. Similarly, nibbāna has no feature, no color, no taste, and no form, so we don’t realize it’s right here. The perceptual systems and the naming activity of the mind work on forms; that’s what they go to first. Therefore, we tend to miss what’s always here. Actually, because it has no living quality to it, space is the worst as well as the best example, but sometimes it is reasonable to use it.

Continued next week: 15 February 2024

Excerpts from Chapter 4, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

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

overlooking this to get to that (part 2)

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By Ajahn Amaro

[Excerpts from Chapter 3 in “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this text.]
Fear of Freedom
The Buddha said that the letting go of the sense of “I” is the supreme happiness (e.g., in UD. 2.1, and 4.1). But over the years we have become very fond of this character, haven’t we? As Ajahn Chah once said, “It is like having a dear friend whom you’ve known your whole life. You’ve been inseparable. Then the Buddha comes along and says that you and your friend have got to split up.” It’s heartbreaking. The ego is bereft. There is the feeling of diminution and loss. Then comes the sinking feeling of desperation.

To the sense of self, being is always defined in terms of being some thing. But the practice and teachings clearly emphasise undefined being, an awareness: edgeless, colourless, infinite, omnipresent—you name it. When being is undefined in this way, it seems like death to the ego. And death is the worst thing. The ego-based habits kick in with a vengeance and search for something to fill up the space. Anything will do: “Quick, give me a problem, a meditation practice… or how about some kind of memory, a hope, a responsibility I haven’t fulfilled, something to anguish over or feel guilty about, anything!” 

I have experienced this many times. In that spaciousness, it is as if there’s a hungry dog at the door desperately trying to get in: “C’mon, lemme in, lemme in.” The hungry dog wants to know: “When is that guy going to pay attention to me? He’s been sitting there for hours like some goddamn Buddha. Doesn’t he know I’m hungry out here? Doesn’t he know it’s cold and wet? Doesn’t he care about me?”

“All saṅkhāras as are impermanent. All dharmas are such and empty. There is no other. . . .” [makes forlorn hungry-dog noises]. These experiences have provided some of the most revealing “moments in my own spiritual practice and exploration. They contain such a rabid hungering to be. Anything will do, anything, in order just to be something: a failure, a success, a messiah, a blight upon the world, a mass murderer. “Just let me be something, please, God, Buddha, anybody.”

To which Buddha wisdom responds, “No.”

It takes incredible internal resources and strength to be able to say “no” in this way. The pathetic pleading of the ego becomes phenomenally intense, visceral. The body may shake and our legs start twitching to run. “Get me out of this place!” Perhaps our feet even begin moving to get to the door because that urge is so strong.

At this point, we are shining the light of wisdom right at the root of separate existence. That root is a tough one. It takes a lot of work to get to that root and to cut through it. So, we should expect a great deal of friction and difficulty in engaging in this kind of work.

Intense anxiety does arise. Don’t be intimidated by it. Leave the urge alone. It’s normal to experience grief and strong feelings of bereavement. There’s a little being that just died here. The heart feels a wave of loss. Stay with that and let it pass through. The feeling that “something is going to be lost if I don’t follow this urge” is the deceptive message of desire. Whether it’s a subtle little flicker of restlessness or a grand declaration—“I am going to die of heartbreak if I don’t follow this!”—know them all as desire’s deceptive allure.

“There is a wonderful line in a poem by Rumi where he says, “When were you ever made any the less by dying?” Let that surge of the ego be born, and let it die. Then, lo and behold, not only is the heart not diminished, it is actually more radiant, vast, and joyful than ever before. There’s spaciousness, contentment, and an infinite ease that cannot be attained through grasping or identifying with any attribute of life whatsoever. No matter how genuine the problems, the responsibilities, the passions, the experiences seem to be, we don’t have to be that. There is no identity that we have to be. Nothing whatsoever should be grasped at.

Link to text source:

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

overlooking this to get to that

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By Ajahn Amaro

[Excerpts from Chapter 3 in “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this text.]

All Buddhist practitioners, regardless of tradition, are familiar with the three characteristics of existence—anicca, dukkha, anattā (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, selflessness). These are “chapter one, page one” Buddhism. But the Theravādins also talk about another three characteristics of existence, at a more refined level: suññatā, tathatā, and atammayatā. Suññatā is emptiness. The term derives from saying “no” to the phenomenal world: “I’m not going to believe in this. This is not entirely real.” Tathatā means suchness. It is a quality very similar to suññatā but derives from saying “yes” to the universe. There is nothing, yet there is something. The quality of suchness is like the texture of ultimate reality. Suññatā and tathatā—emptiness and suchness—the teachings talk in these ways.

This third quality, atammayatā, is not well known. In Theravāda, atammayatā has been referred to as the ultimate concept. It literally means “not made of that.” But atammayatā can be rendered in many different ways, giving it a variety of subtle shades of meaning. Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (in their translation of the Majjhima Nikaya) render it as “nonidentification”— picking up on the “subject” side of the equation. Other translators call it “nonfashioning” or “unconcoctability,” thus pointing more to the “object” element of it. Either way, it refers primarily to the quality of awareness prior to or without a subject-object duality.

The ancient Indian origins of this term seem to lie in a theory of sense perception in which the grasping hand supplies the dominant analogy: the hand takes the shape of what it apprehends. The process of vision, for example, is explained as the eye sending out some kind of ray, which then takes the shape of what we see and comes back with it. Similarly with thought: mental energy conforms to its object (e.g., a thought) and then returns to the subject. This idea is encapsulated in the term “tan-mayatā,” “consisting of that.” The mental energy of the experiencer (subject) becomes consubstantial with the thing (object) being realised.

The opposite quality, atammayatā, refers to a state in which the mind’s energy does not “go out” to the object and occupy it. It makes neither an objective “thing” nor a subjective “observer” knowing it. Hence, nonidentification refers to the subjective aspect and nonfabrication to the objective.

The way emptiness is usually discussed in Dzogchen circles makes it very clear that it is a characteristic of ultimate reality. But in other usages of emptiness or suchness, there still can be a sense of an agent (a subject) which is a ‘this’ looking at a that, and the that is empty. Or the that is such, thus. Atammayatā is the realisation that, in truth, there cannot be anything other than ultimate reality. There is no that. In letting go, in the complete abandonment of that, the whole relative subject-object world, even at its subtlest level, is broken apart and dissolved.

I particularly like the word “atammayatā” because of the message it conveys. Among its other qualities, this concept deeply addresses that persistent sense of always wondering, “What is that over there?” There’s that hint that something over there might be a little more interesting than what is here. Even the subtlest sense of overlooking this to get to that, not being content with this and wanting to become that, is an error. Atammayatā is that quality in us that knows, “There is no that. There is only this.” Then even this-ness becomes meaningless. Atammayatā helps the heart break the subtlest habits of restlessness as “well as still the reverberations of the root duality of subject and object. That abandonment brings the heart to a realisation: there is only the wholeness of the Dharma, complete spaciousness, and fulfilment. The apparent dualities of this and that, subject and object are seen to be essentially meaningless.

One way that we can use this on a practical level is with a technique Ajahn Sumedho has often suggested. Thinking the mind is in the body, we say, “my mind” [points at head] or “my mind” [points at chest]. Right? “It’s all in my mind.” Actually we’ve got it wrong. The body is in our mind rather than the mind in the body, right?

What do we know about our body? We can see it. We can hear it. We can smell it. We can touch it. Where does seeing happen? In the mind. Where do we experience touch? In the mind. Where do we experience smelling? Where does that happen? In the mind. Everything that we know about the body, now and at any previous time, has been known through the agency of our mind. We have never known anything about our body except through our mind. So, our entire life, ever since infancy, everything we have ever known about our body and the world has happened in our mind. So, where is our body?

It doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a physical world, but what we can say is that the experience of the body, and the experience of the world, happens within our mind. It doesn’t happen anywhere else. It’s all happening here. And in that here-ness, the world’s externality, its separateness has ceased. The word “cessation,” (nirodha), may also be used here. Along with its more familiar rendition, the word also means “to hold in check,” so it can mean that the separateness has ceased. When we realize that we hold the whole world within us, its thing-ness, its other-ness has been checked. We are better able to recognise its true nature.

This shift of vision is an interesting little meditation tool that we can use anytime, as was described before with reference to walking meditation. It is a very useful device because it leads us to the truth of the matter. Whenever we apply it, it flips the world inside out, because we are then able to see that this body is indeed just a set of perceptions. It doesn’t negate our functioning freely, but it puts everything into context. “It’s all happening within the space of rigpa, within the space of the knowing mind.” In holding things in this way, we suddenly find our body, the mind, and the world arriving at a resolution, a strange realisation of perfection. It all happens here. This method may seem a little obscure, but sometimes the most abstruse and subtle tools can bring about the most radical changes of heart.

Reflective Inquiry

Reflective inquiry was another of the methods that Ajahn Chah would use in sustaining the view, or we may say, in sustaining right view. It involves the deliberate use of verbal thought to investigate the teachings as well as particular attachments, fears, and hopes, and especially the feeling of identification itself. He would talk about it almost in terms of having a dialogue with himself.

Oftentimes thinking gets painted as the big villain in meditation circles: “Yeah, my mind. . . . If only I could stop thinking, I’d be happy.” But actually, the thinking mind can be the most wonderful of helpers when it is used in the right way, particularly when investigating the feeling of selfhood. There’s a missed opportunity when we overlook the use of conceptual thought in this way. When you are experiencing, seeing, or doing something, ask a question like: “What is it that’s aware of this feeling? Who owns this moment? What is it that knows rigpa?”

The deliberate use of reflective thought or inquiry can reveal a set of unconscious assumptions, habits, and compulsions that we have set in motion. This can be very helpful and can yield great insight. We establish a steady, open mindfulness and then ask: “What is it that knows this? What is aware of this moment? Who is it that feels pain? Who is it that is having this fantasy? Who is it that is wondering about supper?” At that moment a gap opens up. Milarepa once said something along the lines of, “When the flow of discursive thinking is broken, the doorway to liberation opens.” In exactly the same way, when we pose that kind of question, it is like an awl being worked into a knotted tangle of identification and loosening its strands. It breaks the habit, the pattern of discursive thinking. When we ask “who” or “what,” for a moment the thinking mind trips over its own feet. It fumbles. In that space, before it can piece together an answer or an identity, there is timeless peace and freedom. Through that peaceful space the innate quality of mind, mind-essence, appears. It’s only by frustrating our habitual judgments, the partial realities that we have unconsciously determined into existence, that we are forced to loosen our grip and to let go of our misguided way of thinking.

Continued next week: Jan/25/2024

Link to text source: https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

the place of nonabiding

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by Ajahn Amaro

This is the final part of the chapter “The place of Nonabiding” in the book Small Boat, Great Mountain, a free Dhamma publication as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this text.  [Note: The first paragraph is a reprint of the closing paragraph at the end of last week’s post]

“The effort to make a clear distinction between the mind that knows and mind-objects is … very important to our practice. Mindfulness of breathing is a good way to work with this insight. Just notice the feeling of the breath as you follow the sensation of it. The breath is moving, but that which knows the breath is not moving.”

Perhaps we first pick this up by catching the space at the end of the out-breath and then at the end of the in-breath. We notice there is a pause, a space there. But, if we extend our vision, we begin to notice that that spaciousness and stillness are actually always there. As the breath flows in and out, there is an eternal spaciousness of the mind that remains unobstructed by the movement of the breath.

We can also extend this practice to walking meditation. If we stand still, with our eyes open or closed, we can notice that all of the sensations of the body are known within our mind. The feeling of the feet on the ground, the body standing, the feeling of the air, and so on are all held and known within the mind. It can take a few minutes to really get to that point, but if we make the effort, soon we will have that sense of mind established. Then we simply let the body start walking.

Usually when we walk, we’re going someplace; this can complicate the picture. Actually, there’s no essential difference in walking somewhere and going nowhere. Walking meditation is very helpful in this way; it simplifies things a lot. We know we’re going absolutely nowhere. It’s deliberately a completely pointless exercise on the level of trying to get someplace.

By working with the moving body in meditation, we can use it as an opportunity to witness the body walking without going anywhere. As the body walks along at a gentle pace, we begin to see that even though the body is moving, the mind that knows the body, is not moving. Movement does not apply to awareness. There are movements of the body, but the mind that knows the movements aren’t moving. There’s stillness, but there’s flow. The body flows, perceptions flow, but there is stillness. As soon as the mind grabs it and we think we are going somewhere, then the oil and water are mixed up. There’s a “me” going some “place.” But in that moment of recognising—“Oh, look, the stillness of the mind is utterly unaffected by the movement in the body”—we know that quality of still, flowing water.

There’s an appreciation of freedom. That which is moving is not-self. That which is moving is the aspect of flow and change. And the heart naturally takes refuge in that quality of spaciousness, stillness, and openness that knows but is unentangled. “I find meditation with the eyes open is also very helpful in this respect. With the eyes open, there’s more of a challenge to exercise the same quality that is normally established only in walking meditation. If we keep our eyes open and hold the space of the room, we see the coming and going of people, the gentle swaying of the bodies in the breeze, the changing light, the waxing and waning of the afternoon sun.

We can let all of this just come and go and be held in that space of knowing, where there is a conscious experience of both the conventional and ultimate truths. There’s the ultimate view of no person, no time, and no space, of timeless knowing and radiance. Then there are the conventions: you and me, here and there, sitting and walking, coming and going. The two truths are totally interfused; one is not obstructing the other. This is a way of directly appreciating that nonabiding is not just some kind of abstruse philosophy but is something we can taste and value.

In the moment we really understand the principle, the heart realizes, “The body is moving, the world is coming and going, but it’s absolutely going nowhere.” Birth and death have ended right there.

And we don’t have to be sitting still or walking in slow motion to awaken to this insight. We can be running, even playing tennis, and still find the same quality. It pertains equally when we are physically motionless and when we are moving at a high speed, even racing along the freeway.

-Link to original source of Ajahn Amaro’s text: https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

[Note: the text that follows had its origin in an email to my blogging friend Ellen, over the hills and far away. Thanks El]

This is the end of the present series on “The Place of Nonabiding,” and I’d like to close with a particular observation, a glimpse you could say, arrived at through Ajahn Amaro’s teaching. My meditation had come to a standstill… I didn’t quite know how it happened but it was just a kind of ‘nothing’. Then a very specific understanding of what this was came to me through studying the above text. It’s the difference between Mind, on the one hand, and mind + mind objects, one the other. Take walking meditation, when you’re walking, doesn’t matter if it’s walking meditation or walking to get somewhere, as long as you’re mindful of what’s happening; the mind is familiar with the movement of the body walking, the muscles of the leg and the measured pressure of the feet hitting the surface you are walking on. There is an awareness of movement…but the mind that is aware of this is not moving — that Mind is outside time and space, or ‘place’ – it isn’t anywhere.

One other thing Ajahn mentions is why not try having your eyes open in meditation, so I tried that for a few days, and that’s what I was thinking when Jiab and I were walking around the shopping mall last Sunday. There is a particularly long stretch of say, half a mile we have to walk to get to where we’re going. It’s all smooth mall flooring and good lighting and I’ve done this many times so I can forget about my surroundings and focus on what’s happening in the mind. There’s a pattern in my walk these days, now walking with the cane; a regular ‘click’ sound every two steps, as well as Jiab’s small hand holding mine. I’m conscious of the Mind that’s aware of all this happening, while I’m taking care of ordinary things, the act of walking and seeing the shapes of other beings passing by.

Ajahn Amaro made this clear to me, and a memory suddenly came back of an insight into this area of awareness about 12 years ago in Switzerland. I wrote a post about it, and the link is at the end of this text. At that time ,I had only the smallest understanding of what it was and was never able to follow it up. Now after that very long stretch of time, Ajahn Amaro has identified it for me — Gratitude and Respect. I’m convinced now that’s what it is. I’m able to see it because, if you think of it only as one mind, it’s nothing, not interesting and you can’t sustain that sense of mind. If you see it as Mind, it’s not a ‘nothing,’ it becomes a ‘something.’

[A note for regular readers, thank you for following me all these years. As you know I’ve not been able to write my own posts for more than a year now due to AMD (impaired vision) in the right eye. However, my blogging friend Manish helped me activate the microphone in Word which opened the speech-to-text app and now I’m getting used to this new way of writing — it’s a bit like giving a speech in a room with no listeners!]

Link to the post in Switzerland twelve years ago

:https://dhammafootsteps.com/2012/08/24/mindful-alertness/?wref=tp

the present is an infinite ocean

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Ajahn Amaro

[Excerpts from: “The Place of Nonabiding”, a chapter in the book: “Small Boat, Great Mountain”]

“Who” and “What” Do Not Apply

In order to discover the place of nonabiding, we have to find a way of letting go of the conditioned, the world of becoming. We need to recognise the strong identification we have with our bodies and personalities, with all of our credentials, and with how we take it all as inarguable truth: “I am Joe Schmoe; I was born in this place; this is my age; this is what I do for a living; this is who I am.”

It seems so reasonable to think like this, and on one level, it makes total sense. But when we identify with those concepts, there is no freedom. There’s no space for awareness. But then, when we recognise how seriously and absolutely we take this identity, we open ourselves to the possibility of freedom. We taste the sense of self and feel how gritty that is and how real it seems to be. In recognising the feeling of it, we are able to know, “This is just a feeling.” The feelings of I-ness and my-ness are as transparent as any other feelings.

When the mind is calm and steady, I like to ask myself, “Who is watching?” or “Who is aware?” or “Who is knowing this?” I also like asking, “What is knowing?” “What is aware?” “What is practicing non-meditation?” The whole point of posing questions like these is not to find answers. In fact, if you get a verbal answer, it is the wrong one. The point of asking “who” or “what” questions is to puncture our standard presumptions. In the spaciousness of the mind, the words “who” and “what” start sounding ridiculous. There is no real “who” or “what.” There is only the quality of knowing. And, as we work with this in a more and more refined way, we see that feeling of personhood become more and more transparent; its solidity falls away, and the heart is able to open and settle back further and further. Vipassanā and Dzogchen practices are trying to outline very clearly for us how we are constantly making solid that which is inherently not solid. These methods are trying to illuminate the subtler and subtler kinds of clinging that we create around the feelings of self, time, identity, and location.

By framing our world in these ways, we are unconsciously concretising it. Questions like “Who are you?” automatically imply the reality of personhood. Answering with one’s name is a reasonable answer on the relative level. But the trouble comes in when we blindly allow the relative to slide into the absolute. We believe this name is a real thing. “I am a real person; I am Amaro.” Similarly, when we ask, “What day is it?” that question automatically implies the reality of time. If we’re not mindful, we go from acknowledging a human convention—brought about by the passage of our planet around the sun, somewhere in the “middle of this particular galaxy—to creating an absolute, universal truth.

The corollary to this non-creation of solidity in the realm of perceptions and conventions—just in case we’re afraid of losing all forms of reality—is that we don’t have to create or somehow obtain the Dharma to replace the familiar basis we are losing. When we stop creating the obscurations, the Dharma is always here.

As soon as we see where the subtle and coarse forms of clinging are happening, and that stranglehold loosens—when we remind ourselves, “There it is; there’s that grip, the contraction of identity”—there’s an openness and spaciousness. That freedom of heart comes from recognising how we habitually create things and then accept them as real. When that is truly seen and known, the clenching contractedness can’t sustain itself and the Dharma manifests instead.

“When” Does Not Apply

Time is another area in which we should notice subtle clinging. We may experience resting in awareness and have an attendant sense of clarity and spaciousness, but we may also have a firm sensation that this is happening now. When we do, without noticing it, we have turned that now-ness into a solid quality.

The process of letting go happens layer by layer. As one layer falls away, we can get all excited and think, “Oh, great. I’m free now. This open space is wonderful.” But then we start to realize, “Something isn’t quite right here. There is still some stickiness in the system.” We notice the solidification of time and the limitation we have created of the present.

There’s a verse about time by the Sixth Zen Patriarch that I love to quote. It says:

In this moment there is nothing which comes to be.
In this moment there is nothing which ceases to be.
Thus, in this moment, there is no birth and death to be brought to an end.
Thus, the absolute peace is this present moment.
Although it is just this moment, there is no limit to this moment,
And herein is eternal delight.

Birth and death depend on time. Something apparently born in the past, living now, will die in the future. Once we let go of time, and if we also let go of thing-ness, we see there can be no “real “thing” coming into being or dying; there is just the suchness of the present. In this way, there is no birth or death to be brought to an end.

That’s how this moment is absolutely peaceful; it is outside of time, akāliko.

We use such phrases as “this moment,” but they are not quite accurate because they still can give us an impression of the present as a small fragment of time. For even though it is just a moment, the present is limitless. In letting go of the structures of the past and future, we realize that this present is an infinite ocean, and the result of this realisation is living in the eternal, the timeless. We needn’t solidify and conceive the present in contradistinction to a past or future—it is its own self-sustaining vastness

We’re talking here about the abandonment of clinging at a very subtle level, a practice that takes a lot of quick and careful spiritual footwork. When we see our mind getting caught up with something, we can apply the classic vipassanā technique— just hit it with impermanence, not-self, and suffering, the old one, two, three. If we have a good sense of anattā, we chop it with a “not me, not mine” and down it goes. But it is important to remember that clinging is extraordinarily wiley. There we are gloating over our success, but we don’t realize that this is a tag match that’s going on. Another character is bearing down on us from behind while we look at our knockout on the floor. The partner is about to clobber us. We just barely let go of the attachment to time when attachment to opinions starts moving full speed ahead. We drop that, then here-ness takes over. Then it’s the body. . . . Clinging takes shape in many, many different ways and we need to notice them all.

Oil and Water

Up until the point when Ajahn Chah met his teacher Ajahn Mun, he said he never really understood that mind and its objects existed as separate qualities, and that, because of getting the two confused and tangled up, he could never find peace. But what he had got from Ajahn Mun—in the three short days he spent with him—was the clear sense that there is the knowing mind, the poo roo, the one who knows, and then there are the objects of knowing. These are like a mirror and the images that are reflected in it. The mirror is utterly unembellished and uncorrupted by either the beauty or the ugliness of the objects appearing in it. The mirror doesn’t even get bored. Even when there is nothing reflected in it, it is utterly equanimous, serene. This was a key insight for Ajahn Chah, and it became a major theme for his practice and teaching from that time onward.

He would compare the mind and its objects to oil and water contained in the same bottle. The knowing mind is like the oil, and the sense impressions are like the water. Primarily because our minds and lives are very busy and turbulent, the oil and water get shaken up together. It thus appears that the knowing mind and its objects are all one substance. But if we let the system calm down, then the oil and the water separate out; they are essentially immiscible.

There’s the awareness, the Buddha-mind, and the impressions of thought, the sensory world, and all other patterns of consciousness. The two naturally separate out from each other; we don’t have to do a thing to make it happen. Intrinsically they are not mixed. They will separate themselves out if we let them.

At this point, we can truly see that the mind is one thing and the mind-objects are another. We can see the true nature of mind, mind-essence, which knows experience and in which all of life happens; and we can see that that transcendent quality is devoid of relationship to individuality, space, time, and movement. All of the objects of the world—its people, our routines and mind states—appear and disappear within that space.

“Breathing and Walking

The effort to make a clear distinction between the mind that knows and mind-objects is thus very important to our practice. Mindfulness of breathing is a good way to work with this insight. Just notice the feeling of the breath as you follow the sensation of it. The breath is moving, but that which knows the breath is not moving.

Continued next week: Jan/18/2024

Source: https://www.abhayagiri.org/media/books/amaro_small_boat_great_mountain.pdf

the timeless is-ness

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Ajahn Amaro [Excerpts from a chapter in Small Boat, Great Mountain]

There is a lengthy exchange between the Buddha and Ānanda in the Shurangama Sutra, which is a text much referred to in the Ch’an school of the Chinese tradition. For pages and pages the Buddha asks Ānanda, in multifarious ways, if he can define exactly where his mind is. No matter how hard he tries, Ānanda cannot establish it precisely. Eventually he is forced to the conclusion that “I cannot find my mind anywhere.” But the Buddha says, “Your mind does exist, though, doesn’t it?”

Ānanda is finally drawn to the conclusion that “where” does not apply…. Aha!

This is the point that these teachings on nonabiding are trying to draw us to the whole concept and construct of where-ness, the act of conceiving ourselves as this individual entity living at this spot in space and time, is a presumption. And it’s only by frustrating our habitual judgments in this way that we’re forced into loosening our grip.

This view of things pulls the plug, takes the props away, and, above all, shakes up our standard frames of reference. This is exactly what Ajahn Chah did with people when he asked, “If you can’t go forward and you can’t go back and you can’t stand still, where can you go?” He was pointing to the place of nonabiding: the timeless, selfless quality that is independent of location.

Interestingly enough, some current scientific research has also reached a comparable conclusion about the fundamental nature “of matter. In the world of quantum physics, scientists now use such terms as “the well of being” or “the sea of potential” to refer to the primordial level of physical reality from which all particles and energies crystallize and into which they subsequently dissolve. The principle of non-locality in this realm means that the “place where something happens” cannot truly be defined, and that a single event can have exactly simultaneous effects in (apparently) widely separated places. Particles can accurately be described as being smeared out over the entirety of time and space.

Terms like “single place” and “separate places” are seen to apply only as convenient fictions at certain levels of scale; at the level of the ultimate field, the sea of quantum foam, “place” has no real meaning. When you get down into the fine, subatomic realm, where-ness simply does not apply. There is no there there. “Whether this principle is called nonabiding or non-locality, it’s both interesting and noteworthy that the same principle applies in both the physical and mental realms. For the intellectuals and rationalists among us, this parallel is probably very comforting.

I first started to investigate this type of contemplation when I was on a long retreat in our monastery and doing a lot of solitary practice. It suddenly occurred to me that even though I might have let go of the feeling of self—the feeling of this and that and so on—whatever the experience of reality was, it was still “here.” There was still here-ness. For several weeks I contemplated the question, “Where is here?” Not using the question to get a verbal answer, more just to illuminate and aid the abandonment of the clinging that was present.

Recognising this kind of conditioning is half the job—recognising that, as soon as there is a here-ness, there is a subtle presence of a there-ness. Similarly, establishing a “this,” brings up a “that.” As soon as we define “inside,” up pops “outside.” It’s crucial to acknowledge such subtle feelings of grasping; it happens so fast and at so many different layers and levels.

This simple act of apprehending the experience is shining the light of wisdom onto what the heart is grasping. Once the defilements are in the spotlight, they get a little nervous and uncomfortable. Clinging operates best when we are not looking. When clinging is the focus of our awareness, it can’t function properly. In short, clinging can’t cling if there is too much wisdom around.

This simple act of apprehending the experience is shining the light of wisdom onto what the heart is grasping. Once the defilements are in the spotlight, they get a little nervous and uncomfortable. Clinging operates best when we are not looking. When clinging is the focus of our awareness, it can’t function properly. In short, clinging can’t cling if there is too much wisdom around.

Still Flowing Water

“Ajahn Chah would put the same “Where do you go?” question to people for a few months. As they got used to it, he would switch questions. Throughout his teaching career, he posed a number of different ones. The very last questions he came up with before his health deteriorated were in the form of a little series: “Have you ever seen still water?”

They would nod, “Yes, of course, we’ve seen still water before.” At the same time, they were probably saying inwardly, “Now that’s a pretty strange question.” But outwardly everyone was very respectful to Ajahn Chah, as he was one of Thailand’s great meditation masters.

Then he would ask, “Well then, have you ever seen flowing water?” And that also seemed a strange thing to ask. They’d respond, “Yes, we’ve seen flowing water.”

“So, did you ever see still, flowing water?” In Thai you would phrase that as nahm lai ning. “Have you ever seen nahm lai ning?”

“No. That we have never seen.”

He loved to get that bewilderment effect.

Ajahn Chah would then explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects— sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions—flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. The untrained heart chases the delightful, runs away from the painful, and as a result, finds itself struggling, alienated, and miserable. By contemplating our own experience, we can make a clear distinction between the mind that knows (citta) and the sense impressions that flow through it. By refusing to get entangled with any sense impressions, we find refuge in that quality of stillness, silence, and spaciousness, which is the mind’s own nature. This policy of non-interference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.

The natural ability to separate mind (or mind-essence, to use Dzogchen terminology) and mind objects is clearly reflected in the Pali language. There are actually two different verbs meaning “to be,” and they correspond to the conventional or conditioned, and to the unconditioned. The verb “hoti” refers to that which is conditioned and passes through time. These are the common activities and the labels of various sense impressions that we use regularly, and, for the most part, unconsciously. Everyone “agrees, for example, that water is wet, the body is heavy, there are seven days in the week, and I am a man.
The second verb, “atthi,” refers to the transcendental qualities of being-ness. Being-ness, in this case, does not imply a becoming, the world of time or identity. It reflects the unconditioned, the unmanifest nature of mind. So, for example, in the passages from the Udāna about the unborn and “that sphere of being where . . . there is neither a coming nor a going nor a staying still,” the verb “atthi” is always used. It indicates a supramundane, timeless is-ness. The fact that the distinctions between the mind (citta) and mind objects are embedded in the language itself offers both a reflection on and a reminder of this basic truth.

Continued next week: Jan/11/2024.

Happy New Year to all friends, fellow bloggers and visitors. Best Wishes everyone for the year 24, and BTW this blog is now 12 years old which feels evenly balanced and just right.

T

nonabiding

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

The Limitations of the Conditioned Mind

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

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

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

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

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

“Go to the side?”

“Nope, can’t go to the side either.”

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

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

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

Ancient Teachings on Nonabiding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where” Does Not Apply

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

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

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

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

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

what Is a living being?

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

    Wishing: In gladness and in safety,

    May all beings be at ease.

    Whatever living beings there may be;

    Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

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

    The seen and the unseen,

    Those living near and far away,

    Those born and to-be-born,

    May all beings be at ease!

    By not holding to fixed views,

    The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,

    Being freed from all sense desires,

    Is not born again into this world.

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

The Process of Rebirth

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

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

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

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

Conventional Truth & Ultimate Truth

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

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

What Is a Living Being?

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

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

  Where Are We?

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

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

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

The Middle Way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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