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

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

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

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.

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