Excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
A common pattern that forms around negative self-impressions is that of the ‘Inner Tyrant’. The Tyrant is the nagging voice that will always demand that you achieve impossible standards of perfection, never offers congratulation or appreciation, exaggerates shortcomings; and based on this, delivers a scolding. Sometimes the Tyrant offers just a cold, condescending stare. Sometimes the Tyrant keeps urging you to do more, to forgive others, to pull yourself together and to take responsibility – advice which may have its place, but is inappropriate when it comes to shifting self-view. It just entrenches the belief that this stuff is what I am. That view carries the weight that we’re trying to drop. And it comes from the involuntary action of adopting psychological patterns as ‘myself’. Stupid, but we’ve all done it (there’s the belief that I’ll find one that is satisfying, and fits!).
The Tyrant’s programs arise from a citta whenever it lacks stability and empathy; so the Tyrant develops because of a confused, non-empathetic human environment. The social need to get ahead, to be approved of, and to avoid being second-rate doesn’t allow for having empathy with what we or others are actually experiencing. Under this pressure, the mind splits into ‘how I’m feeling’ and ‘what I’m supposed to be’. Thus, empathy and wholeness get jettisoned, and the pressure gets stuck by being internalized as two conflicting ‘selves’ ; the Inner Tyrant as the agent of the pressure – and as its victim, ‘Little Me’.
Sometimes Little Me rebels, or seeks affirmation in order to become Big Me. And so the Tyrant in the mind creates another self-image which can’t sustain itself without continual ego-food. ‘I have to be efficient, always obliging and dutiful, yet self-sufficient – and relaxed.’ In fact, as long as you keep being Little Me, the victim, you support the fragmentation and the Tyrant. So rather than believe or fight with the Tyrant, or defend Little Me, the way out is to switch off the program through resolving the pattern. In other words, you drop the tendency to make a self-image out of changeable qualities – which indeed may not be ideal or perfect. (No personal qualities are.)
As you meet the sense of ‘it’s all up to me’, or ‘I don’t deserve to feel good’, or ‘I must try harder’, you can find areas of your body that feel tense, fidgety or contracted. Then you evoke your Refuge tone, and stay with that until there is some openness or ease – and it affects your body. Then widen awareness to cover the entirety of your embodied field; this suffusive effect restores the balance of the heart.
A balanced heart is naturally empathetic. Then you can direct it to the incapable, the failing, the unnoticed, and the success-failure ripples and patterns – wherever and in whoever they arise. Learn how to meet and relate to, rather than analyse, qualities before doing anything else. In fact, it may be all you have to do in order to touch into the disengagement that allows the heart to open in compassion – towards the Tyrant, Little Me, or anyone. Just to abide in compassionate awareness, not fixing, not blaming and not changing anything, may be exactly what’s needed – because then you’re not acting from that desperate, judgemental basis. Then you don’t have to perform that well to be warm and balanced within yourself. You don’t have to look like a supermodel to feel appreciated. You don’t have to have things go your way to feel content. You don’t need to have one special person in order to feel loved. What is needed is to cultivate great heart. And it arises through accepting and responding to the unsatisfactory condition of personality.
View is the instigator of kamma: as you believe, so do you act. View is a magnet that attracts the energy of will and inclinations: develop a certain attitude and you can be sure that your mind will assemble a reality out of that. But if we notice how the view ‘I am’ attracts energy … and how energy creates a pattern … and a mental pattern becomes a conviction … and a conviction becomes a standpoint – that’s how the isolated self arises. So as long as there is the need for a standpoint, a need to be, and to prove, then that need will support a self-view. Then if there is holding to that standpoint, conflict with others, grievance and resentment will follow in due course.
But if energy can go another way, generating a pattern of groundedness, of empathy, of great heart, the view can shift. It clears with the insight that ‘all this stuff, all this energy, is invoked by saṇkhārā, shaped by consciousness, given meaning by perception, resonating with feeling, productive of intention, and resulting in effects … All this is changing, insubstantial; there is no self in this, and no self can be established apart from this.’ We therefore act with integrity and don’t hang on. And there’s no stress, no weight in that.
Excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
[Note: We begin this excerpt with the final paragraph of the last piece on November 7, 2024. Then the text continues with the first paragraph of today’s text.]
“In the world in general, there’s a huge inheritance of psychological programs based upon violence and deprivation – and who knows where all that began. Under the pressure of desperate need and hopelessness, in a context that is starved of goodwill, or is abusive, citta can get so distorted and compressed that it only experiences relief in the blaze of rage and brutality. For example, say your father got brutalized by being in a war; this led to his bouts of depression, explosive rage and drunkenness. You picked up the results of that, were insecure and became abusive towards yourself and insensitive to others. Where and when do these cycles of violence and punishment and revenge end? Only when we can regard our own and other people’s actions empathetically in terms of cause and effect. That regard is equanimity, the most reliable base for action.”
With these samatha resources, the citta can first meet negative qualities without reacting to them; and then insightfully question whether this or any kammic patterning is who you are. Meeting, rather than analysing or fixing, carries the intent to fully receive qualities as they are; this intent is empathetic, so the mind’s energy (which powers that saṇkhāra) feels that – and its current is changed. This stops it from creating more tracks and perceptions.
Where body and heart come together is a good meeting place. Normally, as a negative mood or a poignant memory arises, it catches hold and the heart resonates accordingly – so we become that mood, with its characteristic pattern. Being averse to all this and trying to stop it merely adds to the intensity. If you sustain the view that the way you are is because of what others have or haven’t done – that resignation closes the heart and locks the pattern into place. If you ignore the nature of your patterning by going out into sights and sounds, tastes and ideas in the present, then you may be unaware of it for a while; but when the music stops … it’s back to ‘me’ again with the mood swings and jaded self-image. Meanwhile, any acts of denial and distraction have their effects. You activate a saṇkhāra track into desolate territory.
Instead, stay with the pattern and feel it in your body. Maybe it feels constricted or numb in places; or gets agitated. This is skilful because trying to directly change your negative mind-state isn’t always the remedy – especially if the source of the problem isn’t what you’ve done, but what you’ve had done to you. If you were bullied at school, or have been discriminated against because of ethnic background or gender, your heart’s energy may well have been shaped by that. Understandable as such patterns are, any resultant defensiveness, self-affirmation or counter-attacks still don’t return the citta to its easeful or unpatterned state.
To dissolve a negative pattern, you focus on where your body feels the sense of a safe space around it – even if this is as humble as feeling the ground beneath you. Give full attention to the steadiness until that quality attracts heart-energy and your citta feels steadier. Then you can gradually draw that steadied awareness over your body. If you can link it to the rhythmic process of in- and-out breathing, that’s great, because with mindfulness, the energy of breathing can refine and suffuse any positive effect through the entire nervous system. This takes time, but the energies of passion, sourness, stagnation, restlessness and uncertainty will gradually dissolve into the stream of wholesome energy. This consolidation of awareness embeds the impulsive base of the mind in deeper currents than that of sense-contact and discursive thought. When in touch with this deep foundation, there is a firm ease that checks memories and moods from becoming overwhelming, and makes the citta ‘great’ in terms of its energetic boundaries and capacity.
In tandem with this, you attend to the mood of the mind with empathy. From this perspective, if sorrow or agitation or fear wells up, rather than re-enact old habits of feeling bereft, or of trying to figure out a solution, you silently ask: ‘How am I with this now?’ The aim is not to shift away from this topic, but to witness that topic with stable awareness so that some wise seeing can get underneath the story to the emotion. Instead, find a place where you sense ease or steadiness, and spread awareness from that place to the edges of the difficult area. To the extent to which you’ve strengthened your citta, your awareness can be onlooking and compassionate – with, but not in, the pattern. As the energy of the stuck place changes, it can begin to release; the heart can open. Then you centre in its positive current and suffuse afflicted places until the system comes into balance and feels refreshed.
Even if you’re feeling fine right now, you should bear in mind that the citta does have latent afflictive tendencies. So, it’s always a good idea to brighten and clean the mind in order to meet what arises in the day. This is basic sanity. If you go into a world of random cause and effect when you’re ill-at-ease, tense or depressed, you’re leaving yourself wide open to laying down some unskilful kamma. But with the great heart you won’t get knocked about, defensive, or reactive.
Continued next week. Please note, I’ve been offline for about two months, my old laptop gave me a problem to solve and I just couldn’t find a way through. My old friend Manish got me up and running on a new computer. Learn by doing, still a few things to puzzle over. So many small things to study, it’ll take time. Sorry I wasn’t ‘here’ for so long. I missed you! Hope everyone is well. More later Tiramit
Excerpts from Kamma and the end of Kamma by Ajahn Sucitto
Unless we cultivate letting go, unless we can stop accepting heart-patterns as unbiased truth and ‘my self’, the issues of the past will be the basis for further kamma. The difficulty is that letting go requires the presence of an awareness that can receive these impressions, their tracks and residues. This takes a lot of grounded good-will, clarity, and spaciousness – qualities that can remind the citta of ‘safe and comfortable’.
In life-scenarios of chronic abuse, or sustained performance-driven stress, the heart-pattern of ‘safe and comfortable’ may in fact be rare. So, when we go to the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha for Refuge, this isn’t just a catch-phrase; it’s a practice of sensing the felt meaning of the Triple Gem, attuning one’s heart to it, and opening one’s embodied presence to the quality of Refuge.[26] A true Refuge is that which remains when your world goes upside down; this is why people with great faith can survive disasters and tyrannies.
The felt meaning, the perception, of being in Refuge, may be evoked by attending to what is not urgent or threatening right now – even if that is just the space of an open sky. Even a visual sign such as this can evoke the tone of ‘being safe in this’, a tone that allows your body to breathe freely. However, the tone of Refuge can more skilfully occur through reflections on bright kamma, that of others or one’s own. Its underlying theme is that you don’t create it; it arrives by being receptive to a supportive pattern, whether that is a memory or a presence. A Refuge that we feel welcomed into can then provide the container wherein distressing memories can arise and pass, and thus assist in ‘de-conditioning’ the mind.
Clearing Results from the Past: An Outline
With regard to what we can do to clear our inner world, the process of clearing the past as outlined by the Buddha is twofold: first, to acknowledge the results of action, and to determine “not to act in such ways again; and secondly, to spread inclinations of goodwill through the whole system and towards anyone else connected to the action.[27]
What needs to be cleared occurs on three levels: there are active programs – actions we keep doing; there are involuntary tendencies – patterns that lie dormant but come to the surface under stress, or as the mind unfolds in meditation; and finally there’s the self-view – the aspect of self-construction that refers to how we habitually regard ourselves. In all cases, the method entails accessing the patterns and programs in the mind, and revealing their tracks with deep attention. And then being mindful of and fully sensing how these conditions manifest. Then we need to meet them skilfully so that a response arises from the intelligence that begins to return through not following the old track.
In brief, we establish and firm up a reference to a healthy pattern, and then expand awareness so that that bright quality receives, meets and smoothes out residues of fear, rage, self-hatred, grief – or whatever the citta hasn’t been able to discharge. This may sound like a lot, but because many impulses and programs move along a few basic tracks, clearing the past is not a matter of focusing on every wild pig that’s charged through the heart – it’s more a case of straightening, uprooting, or leaving its tracks.
At the most obvious level, that of acknowledging actions and of changing how you’re going to act in the future, you own up to any unskilful deed you feel you’ve done, and with deep attention, discern the underlying pattern. (Remember, it’s a pattern, not a self.) Widen attention so that the citta can step back from that pattern. At the same time, stabilize the mind in the energetic“feel of resolve, so that awareness is strengthened – then a resolution that’s made will stick. In this way, you block off access and nourishment for that bad habit, and its track begins to fade.
Following on from that, the general theme of practice is to spread kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), appreciative joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā) into the citta’s field. Collectively, they’re called ‘the measureless’ (appamāno) or a ‘celestial abiding’ (brahmavihāra). In more down-to-earth terms, accessing them means touching into the felt sense and tone of these empathetic qualities, then lingering in and strengthening the citta with them. When the heart feels full, it’s natural and easy to steadily extend its awareness towards beings you feel you may have affected – and towards your own heart if it has become infected in some way or another.
So: you recollect an unskilful deed you’ve done towards another, considering how you would feel if you were them – or towards the person you may have been at that time. And when you remember being the object of others’ abuse or lack of empathy, you do much the same. You take the impression of who you feel you’ve been, and who you feel the other has been, and suffuse the entirety with goodwill; or at least with non-aversion.
The practice covers both ourselves and others, because in the heart, ‘self and other’ are just forms that arise from saññā-saṇkhāra. They are also interdependent. That is, our personalities are established and moulded dependent on who we’ve customarily interacted with: such as parents, peers and colleagues. And it is through the eyes of our personality that we regard and define others. When the personality has an embedded mistrust or hostility pattern, it projects that onto others. Granted, many people can exhibit forceful or intimidating mannerisms, but when your buttons get pushed by a few words, or a glance, or even just by their status, then you know that you have stuff to clear – otherwise you’ll keep that track of inferred hostility open and well-trodden.
The process of clearing entails our capacity to suffuse (or ‘pervade’) the citta with healthy ripples and waves. This entails a soft and slow expansion of awareness through body and heart. It’s a meditative training based on the understanding that where awareness goes, energy goes; awareness is the primary intelligence of citta. It’s through this that ignorance is removed.
In terms of practice, you don’t go into the tangling energies of ill-will, craving or despond, but stay wide and steady around them. With reference to the bodily aspect of patterning, you can slowly extend awareness through the entire body, so that the refined energy of breathing and the uncontracted quality of awareness clear hindrances. This generates the bright states of rapture and ease; and the mind settles in samādhi. In terms of heart, the suffusion is of the intentions of kindness, or compassion, or appreciative joy, or equanimity – so that the contracted or sour heart-energy unfolds into a beautiful abiding: ‘abundant, exalted, immeasurable, free from hostility and ill-will.’[28] Although they have different approaches, their combined cultivation is the kamma that generates the ‘great heart’.[29]
In referring to the brahmavihāra states, the Buddha uses the simile of someone blowing on a conch to evoke the way that these radiate and suffuse the atmosphere.[30]
Exactly what ‘tune’ one plays depends on the distortion one is healing. There is the bleak ‘have to do it on my own’ hardness that needs the nourishing quality of kindness; at other times, it’s the heart’s irritability or vulnerability that calls for compassion, the protective energy. Sometimes it’s the case whereby we recognize the harm that comes from neglecting what is good in ourselves and others, or even through taking others for granted. Then the intent to appreciate goodness can arise. It’s important to not neglect this: the stream of good deeds that you did do, the kind words that just seemed natural, but were the right thing at the right time, the acts of courtesy or generosity that other people manifest. It’s important not to overlook appreciation – because we often do.
Equanimity holds the empathetic space and allows things to unfold. It doesn’t ask for results, but attunes to how things are right now. It is where the issue of self comes to an end as we understand kamma. With this, we realize that ultimately no-one did anything: it’s just that patterns and programs get established based on reckless actions, and on what each person has had done to them.
In the world in general, there’s a huge inheritance of psychological programs based upon violence and deprivation – and who knows where all that began. Under the pressure of desperate need and hopelessness, in a context that is starved of goodwill, or is abusive, citta can get so distorted and compressed that it only experiences relief in the blaze of rage and brutality. For example, say your father got brutalized by being in a war; this led to his bouts of depression, explosive rage and drunkenness. You picked up the results of that, were insecure and became abusive towards yourself and insensitive to others. Where and when do these cycles of violence and punishment and revenge end? Only when we can regard our own and other people’s actions empathetically in terms of cause and effect. That regard is equanimity, the most reliable base for action.
The End of Grief: The Nun’s Story
‘Overwhelmed with grief for my son – naked, demented, my hair disheveled my mind deranged – I went about here & there, living along the side of the road, in cemeteries & heaps of trash, for three full years, afflicted with hunger & thirst’
‘Then I saw the One Well-Gone, gone to the city of Mithilā: tamer of those untamed, Self-Awakened, with nothing to fear from anything, anywhere.’
‘Regaining my mind, paying him homage, I sat myself down. He, Gotama, from sympathy taught me the Dhamma. Hearing his Dhamma,
I went forth into homelessness. Applying myself to the Teacher’s words,’
‘I realized the state of auspicious bliss. All griefs have been cut off, abandoned, brought to this end, for I’ve comprehended the grounds from which grief come into play.’ (Therīgathā 6:2; Thanissaro, trans.)
Excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto
The programmed, conditioned citta generates further programs and conditions; its formative energy (citta-saṇkhāra) runs into our bodies and drives emotions and thoughts. We can feel this programmed process occur in the flush of our skin, the tightening in the stomach, the opening of the chest, or the sinking in the heart. In the case of a bodily reflex, a somatic program/energy, or kāya-saṇkhāra, stimulates instinctive emotion; either that or it follows through on the heart’s signals to trigger reactions – even in cases which don’t pertain to the physical body. The body tightens up when we are in an argument; a loud noise may cause it to jump; a ‘warm’ smile triggers off a flutter in the pulse, and so on. The experiencing body (kāya) and heart are essentially not separate, and at an instinctive reflex level, the bodily intelligence will override the rational. This is important to bear in mind, because even when a memory, or the result of an action, is reasoned with and dismissed, forgotten, or suppressed (‘Oh, never mind; that was years ago,’ etc.), there can still be a bodily and emotive memory-pattern that arises at an unexpected time.
Consequently, in order to clear those effects, you have to meet them in aware embodied presence. The snag is that the citta uses bodily saṇkhāra in its shutting-down strategy; then pieces of that memory get buried under the body’s armouring or numbing programs. So, the ‘voice’ of their memories is silenced. And, as we’re often dealing with or creating inner chatter, we don’t feel and therefore don’t know about these shut-down programs. However, we might notice that our body has areas of numbness and tension that aren’t related to physical causes. Such conditions may indicate that the bodily intelligence has closed over some afflictive or traumatic residues. Another indicator is that one feels overwhelmed, or flattened, or explosive in certain scenarios; problems seem huge, one loses perspective and lashes out, freezes or collapses. This is because when an area that has had intelligence removed from it suddenly opens, the readings and responses aren’t intelligent. We do and say stupid, reckless things. Then we inherit the results of that – and become a self, based on the cycle of blow-up, punish, suppress … and then we repeat the program.
Any form of abuse – physical, verbal, or psychological (mine towards others, others’ towards me, or mine towards myself) – closes down or perverts the heart’s sensitivity. All that creates a pattern that encourages a program. Even unskilful thoughts have that effect; particularly as we can have them many times more than we can carry out physical deeds. If we allow the mind to repeatedly formulate deceit, jealousy, or guilt, that creates a track down which the emotional and psychological energies will run. If you swat annoying insects, or haul fish out of the water with a hook for sport, you may not think this is particularly evil. Indeed, we can do a lot worse.
But with any decisive action we generate a ripple in the citta; repeated, it becomes a pattern that energy flows into, and a saṇkhāra track – a potential for further action – gets established. With any act of harming or abusing, that ripple forms a wave that obliterates respect for life. If it isn’t acknowledged and caused to subside, it can extend its disregard to legitimize killing ‘bad’ people, and any inconvenient others. Genocide was supported by the notion that the indigenous people were sub-human – so they could be treated in the same way that we’ve learned to treat animals. Especially if they were occupying land that we wanted. Sadly, it’s also the case that the State demands that its citizens fight and kill others in a war – and thereby do violence to their own hearts. Whose fault is that?
‘Ignorance’ has to be the answer. Through this, what may have begun as your own impulse, or someone else’s that you followed or reacted to, gets embedded – and creates a track in the citta’s field. Then fresh physical or verbal actions move down that path. To use an analogy: a wild pig, alarmed or excited by something or another, darts through the undergrowth in a forest. It thereby creates a track. Other pigs, and deer, see that track and walk down it. The track widens and becomes established. You’re wandering through the forest, see the track, and, as it represents an easy way through the undergrowth, you also use it. The track becomes a path and eventually a road. Cars drive down it, so that even when the forest is cut down, there is no other way to travel. You’re not familiar with the wider territory. Eventually, because the road is convenient, you build your house beside it.
That’s how it is: the mind keeps running down saṇkhāra tracks that were established through a careless impulse, or by chance, or even by other people. People can still feel chronic guilt over the heedless actions of a decade ago. And we can also harbour grudges, or be running programs of self-disparagement and lack of worth over actions and attitudes that we’ve been the recipients of. Worse still: when it’s bound up with a self-view, an identity gets built next to that track – that failed, evil self is ‘who I am’. In such a case, when we do something, we feel that we’re bound to get it wrong and look out for signs of disapproval. Or on reviewing an action, we decide that our motives were impure. In some cases, tracks get so habitual that the mind loses touch with any fresher possibilities. Whose fault is that?
Wrong question. Through ignorance, saṇkhāra tracks create a self as their source, when the source was really an embedded memory, vipāka. But on account of that pattern, programs arise: people sabotage their well-being with self-disparagement, anxiety or depression, and employ distracting habits to shut off those memories and resonances. This is a set-up for addiction. Drinking, drugs, pornography, gambling, over-eating, binge-shopping, internet addiction, incessant chatter and restless activity: there is a wide range of addictions, some more toxic than others, but “all afflictive, and all contributing to the ‘inadequate self’ they originated from, and deepening that impression.
To sum up: the patterns and programs, good and bad, are the waveforms in the causal field of citta. They are the means through which the mind operates in order to establish how to function in this sensory and psychological world. Furthermore, they formulate a self-image as the holding pattern, the locus of stability. However, as it’s constructed out of dynamic energy patterns, such a locus can’t be very stable. The best the average person can do is maintain a workable series of ‘good-enough’ patterns that keep the show on the road. And yet,
as the citta keeps pulsing and turning, at times it encounters its unresolved patterns or shut-down territory – and the past rises up independently of one’s wishes. Dependent on ignorance, and compounded by responses, impulses and intentions, the past event has laid down a pattern in the citta, and a sense of ‘I am this’ arises through its instinctive re-enactment.
Excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto
Clearing the Past One who was heedless in the past and is heedless no more, illuminates the world like the moon freed from the clouds. Dhammapada: ‘The World’, 172
Do you ever remember things you wish you hadn’t done? Perhaps after making a cutting remark, or catching yourself exaggerating in order to get your own way, have the sinking realization: ‘Oh-oh, lost it again …!’ Or, do you get flooded with painful memories about what’s been done to you? … ‘Is this my bad kamma …? How do I get out of this?’
Old Kamma Doesn’t Die
At some time or another, all of us have said or done things that we look back on with some regret. Or we have not done things – not said the generous, friendly thing we wish we had said, not done the noble or caring deed that we wish we had done. Then again, we may have had unpleasant things done to us. Other people may have taken advantage of us or abused us; people we trusted let us down – so maybe some mistrust lingers and affects how we relate to people. In any case, if an event has emotionally moved us, the heart-impression is strong, and that impression arises again in the experience of involuntary memory. It’s one feature of our inner world: you were talking to someone, the conversation took a few turns – and suddenly you were back arguing with your father, or feeling rejected by a loved one … again.
This reliving of past events is the case even when we didn’t do anything, but were the recipients of other people’s bad or good actions. Why? Because the underlying program of the affective mind, or citta, is to register contact, and based on that, designate a heart-impression. This lingers as a perception (saññā) that can store the emotion in the way that a barcode stores images or instructions.
Once formed, these perceptual patterns generate programs that keep forming and informing different scenarios based on their themes. It’s as if the actors and backdrops change, but their voices and atmospheres can keep resounding in our hearts. Recycled by patterns and programs, stories about alienation, unworthiness or mistrust (and more) become so familiar that they form part of our heart-territory, aspects of ‘myself’. Afflictive felt meanings such as these can take hold and establish personality patterns such as being the victim, or the one who gets left out, or the flawed, unloved or impure. They then lessen our self-respect and our confidence in doing things or in being with others.
So, the past that comes flooding back isn’t really past; it’s those saṇkhārā rising up and recycling their perceptions. And yet there’s a glimmer of hope in the fact that they’re recycled, rather than permanent and ‘myself’. The recycling of heart-impressions creates a sense of continuity, of history and of being someone defined in that – this is the program of ‘becoming’, or ‘existence’ (bhava). It creates us as solid, to a degree, but that isn’t always good.
Nor is it true: nothing changes so quickly as citta.[24] This is because citta, rather than being some kind of soul or immaterial ‘thing’, is more like a vortex of sensitive intelligence, or an energetic field like that of a magnet – except that the field is dynamic. It’s sensitive and receptive, and as manas brings perceptions, or as bodily sensations touch it, shifts happen: the citta is set trembling. Disagreeable and agreeable impressions push and pull it, thus the citta’s trembling forms waves of resistance or excitement. These get rigid or brisk under the pressure of some perceptions and feelings, or reach out when touched by others. In many cases, the waveform rises up under stimulation … and then subsides. But through the program of perception, the citta ‘learns’ the signals to rise up to, and the ones to recoil from.
Dependent on whether and how a perception has moved the citta, we may cognize that a smile means ‘friendly’, and that the smiling person is trustworthy. Pleasant feeling = ‘good’. Then we ‘re-cognize’ those signs when we come across them or others like them – even when the basis of the meaning is superficial. Signals are not reality, and need to be checked out: we are prone to short-term attention, grabbing at feeling, and jumping to conclusions. Thus, hastily established heart-impressions become reference points for how to act. Advertising, media propaganda and political slogans depend on establishing patterns in the heart. It’s called ‘ignorance-contact’: imprinting stupidity.
This is the crucial point; this is why citta doesn’t erase or stop recycling patterns. Based upon this ignorance, the self-construction program kicks in: the pattern provides a stable reference point, so it becomes part of my world, and my identity. Hence toads disgust me, or I vote for the Liberal candidate, or I must have peanut-butter rolls and coffee to begin my day. Contact, heart-impression, then behaviour-pattern – and out of all that, a self is born with the potential to act accordingly: kamma.
In extreme cases, when the impact is severe (for example, in cases of war, or assault), the energy-field of citta shatters, fires off fight-flight-freeze reflexes, and thereby adds to the discord that has to subside. And, however one tries to pull oneself together, shrug and move on, the subsiding of the energetic pattern of ‘shattered’ only fully occurs as the citta witnesses that the initiating impact has been resolved. This may be the case when the threatening thing is met, responds, backs off, or changes into something non-threatening. Sometimes it even apologizes! But when the impact is a memory, there’s no-one there to apologize, no signal that the attack has ended. In such instances, the citta has to be encouraged to coalesce around the impact and its responses until steadiness returns. Even if this means steadying in the presence of reverberations of fear or grief or rage, rather than suppressing them.
Needless to say, these emotions are not easy to be present with, and so the citta often shuts down. This means that the citta removes its intelligence, its witnessing, from that pattern. At that point, we stupefy; then the shock, fear or rage, etc. is no longer in aware presence and the experience becomes traumatic. In such a case, the pattern still exists in a ghost form, ready to be brought alive when a fitting signal triggers it. And most likely, citta once again will shut down – generally by shifting its attention to another topic, sound, sight, taste … you name it. Either that or it will set off a less-than-intelligent reaction: blame someone, blame yourself, drink, eat and so on. But you don’t get over it. You either suppress it – or you resolve it.
Continued excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto
Sit in an upright posture, and bring awareness to the present-moment experience of the body. Ask yourself, ‘How do I know I have a body?’ In other words, seek the direct experience of embodiment – the pressures, energies, pulses and vitality that signify awareness of the body. Then from that place of direct sensitivity, look for more details.
Push down a little through your tail and pelvic floor. Notice how that helps to shift the spinal column into a balance where the sacrum is straightened and the lumbar region of the back forms a springy arch. Avoid locking or straining. Use a slight downward push to form the arch, rather than force an exaggerated bow. Then sustain that posture by lengthening your abdominal muscles so that the rib cage is supported. This posture allows the body to be carried by a spring that transfers its weight down to what you’re sitting on.
Move your awareness gradually and sensitively up your spine from the tail tip through the sacrum, and the lumbar and thoracic vertebrae. Widening your focus, get a sense of the entire torso extending upwards along the spine from the pelvic region. Check out the centre of the back, between the lower tips of the shoulder blades: bring this place alive by slightly drawing it inwards towards the heart. Moving upwards, make sure that the shoulders are dropped and relaxed, and sweep a relaxing awareness from the base of the skull down to the sides of the neck and across the tops of the shoulders. Bring awareness to the neck vertebrae – notice that there is a sense of space between the back of the skull and the top of the neck. For this, it may help if you tuck your chin in and tilt it down just a little. Check the overall balance – that the head feels balanced on the spine, directly above the pelvis. Check that the spine feels uncramped; relax the shoulders, the jaw, and let the chest be open. Spend some time feeling into the skeletal structure, with the suggestion that the joints – those between the arms and the shoulders, for example – loosen and feel open. Let the arms be long. Relax into balance. Sense the spaciousness that this allows you; stay spacious and avoid a close-up or intense scrutiny.
Attend to the bodily sensations in bodily terms: for example, how the weight of the body feels distributed; or the degree of vitality and inner warmth that is present. Feel for the subtle movements in the body even when it is still – pulses suffusions and the rhythmic sensations associated with breathing in and out. Get comfortable: evaluate the bodily impressions in terms of ease. A certain pressure in one place may feel solid and grounding, while in another, tight or stiff. The energies and inner sensations moving through your body may feel agitated, or vibrant. Put aside any interpretations as to what causes these, or any immediate reactions to make things change. Instead, spread awareness evenly over the entire body, with an intent of harmony and steadiness. Let that attitude be felt as an energy spread over the body. This will allow any tightness to relax, and bring brightness to slack or dull areas.
As things come into harmony, the sensations of the breathing will become more apparent, deep and steady. You may find that not only does the breathing flow down into the abdomen, but it also sets up a subtle flush or tingle that can be felt in the face, the palms, and chest. Dwell in that and explore how it feels. It’s likely that the mind will wander, but make sure, above all, that you stay with the intent of harmony and steadiness. So, when you notice that your mind has drifted, at that moment of realization – pause. Don’t react. As the mind hovers for that moment, introduce the query ‘How do I know I’m breathing now?’ Or, simply, ‘Breathing?’ Attune to whatever sense arises that tells you you’re breathing, and follow the next out-breath, letting the mind rest on that out-breath. See if you can stay with that out-breath through its completion into the pause before the inbreath. Then follow the in-breath in like fashion, to the very last sensation. In this way, let the rhythm of the breathing lead the mind – rather than impose an idea of mindfulness onto the natural process of breathing.
Explore how you experience breathing in different parts of your body, beginning with the abdomen. ‘How does the abdomen know breathing?’ You may experience it as a ‘fluid’ swelling of sensation. Be with that for a few minutes, letting the mind take that in. Then, ‘How does the solar plexus know breathing?’ This may feel more solid, an opening and closing. Then the chest, where swelling ‘airy’ sensations predominate. Check out the throat, and the centre of the brow above the bridge of the nose. Notice how the breathing is not one mode of sensations or energies, and yet in terms of energy, the distinction between in- and out-breathing is always recognizable.
Eventually your mind will want to settle. Let it choose how that feels most comfortable. It may settle in an area of the body, such as the chest or in the abdomen or nasal cavities. Or it may be that awareness can easily cover the body as a whole. In time as the mind merges into the breath-energy, spread its awareness over the entirety of the bodily sense, in the manner of suffusing or pervading. The distinct sensations of breathing may well diffuse and dissolve into that energy. Allow some trust, letting the thinking attention relax, and relying on the enjoyment of subtle energy to hold your awareness. Be present but not engaged with whatever arises.
When you wish to stop, draw your attention back to the textures of the flesh and the firmness of the skeletal structure. As you feel that grounded presence, allow your eyes to open without looking at anything in particular. Instead, let the light and forms take shape by themselves.
Continued excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto
Samādhi is generated through skilful intentions in the present. It also relies upon already having a mind-set that settles easily, and it naturally sets up programs for the future: one inclines to simpler, and more peaceful ways of living. Samādhi provides us with a temporary liberation from some kammic themes – such as sense-desire, ill-will, worry, or despond – and it gives us a firm, grounded mind which feels bright. But samādhi itself is still bound up in time and cause and effect; it is kamma, bright and refined, but still formulated.
Also, it takes time to develop samādhi. And meanwhile, the very notion of ‘getting samādhi’ can trigger stressful formulations such as: ‘Got to get there’, ‘Can’t do it’ and so on. Accordingly, the learning point for both one who does, and for one who doesn’t, develop much samādhi, is to handle and review the programming. ‘How much craving is in this? How much “me holding on” is there?’ That’s the process of insight. It’s always relevant.
The results of holding on can be discerned in our most obvious and continual form of kamma: thinking. Thinking plays a big part in our lives, governing how we relate to circumstances and other people, determining what potentials we want to bring forth and where interesting opportunities might lie – and just reflecting, musing and daydreaming. So moderating and contemplating thought is an all-day practice. This practice offers understanding – and therefore a means of purifying one’s kamma, and even getting beyond it.
To do this, notice the tone or speed or raggedness that thinking has. By doing this, there is a disengagement from the topic or purpose of thinking; and your mind settles and connects to how the thought feels in the heart. When your heart is grounded in the body, you don’t get captured by the drive or emotional underpinning of thinking. Whether you have a great idea, or are eager to get your idea acted upon, or you don’t have a clue and feel ashamed of that – all that can be sensed and allowed to change into something more balanced. So this hinges on referring to the interconnected system of body, thought and heart. Ideally we want to direct our lives with the full set, so that we’re not just acting on whims and reactions, and our thoughts and ideas are supported by good and steady heart. That heart is where kamma arises, so you want to make sure it’s in good shape and is on board with what you’re proposing. Get it grounded in the body before you let the tide of thought rush in.
Once you settle the heart, you can evaluate the current of thought in terms of its effect. Sometimes it feels really pleasant in itself (like when people agree with me), but when I refer to how it sits in my heart and body, thinking can seem overdramatic, self-important, petty or unbalanced. Too often thinking closes the opportunity for the miraculous to occur, or for a fresh point of view to arise. And as the after-effect of all kamma is that a self-image gets created, do my thoughts make me into a fault-finder; a compulsive do-er; a habitual procrastinator; a feverish complicator; or a slightly grandiose attention-seeker? Does thinking keep my heart very busy being ‘me’, or could it be just a balanced response to what a situation needs – something that can dissolve without trace?
And as self-images do arise, can they be evaluated and witnessed with steady awareness? Can openness and goodwill arise in that awareness to know: ‘this is an image, this is old kamma, don’t act on this but let it pass?’ In this way, we can avoid making assumptions, established attitudes, and directed intentions into fixed identities. These are the blades of the spinning fan – stored up as citta-saṇkhārā. If you train in samādhi and paññā, those self-programs can be un-plugged. True actions don’t need an actor.
What underpins the automatic plugging-in is ignorance, the programming that is most fundamental to our suffering and stress. Ignorance is easy: pre-fabricated attitudes cut out the awkward process of being with things afresh. Ignorance gets seeded in the familiar and blossoms into the compulsive – which feels really solid and ‘me’. That’s how it is. But as the sense of self centres around people’s most compulsive behaviour, the personal self is so often experienced as the victim of habit, a being who’s locked into patterns and programs.
This is why it’s always remedial to attend to the kinds of kamma that are about not doing. The not-doing of harm, for example, is an absolutely vital intention to carry out – if enough of us followed this, it would change the world. And what about the other precepts? We can fulfil these, day after day and not notice it because our hearts and minds were elsewhere, believing we should do more and not noticing the not-doing mind. But the crucial Dhamma actions are just this: to disengage from the compulsive, and mindfully engage with the steady openness of your own interconnected intelligence.
For example, when a verbal exchange is getting overheated, you can attune to what’s happening in the body – the palms of the hands, the temples and the eyes are accessible indicators of energy. Does this energy need to be more carefully held? Sometimes I find that just acknowledging and adjusting the speed of speaking or walking shifts attitudes and moods; softening the gaze is also helpful. Say you’re feeling dull or depressed: is your body fully present …? Giving some attention there with a kindly attitude helps the energy to brighten up, and shifts the mind-state.
Holding on, gaining, succeeding, losing: the programs that saṇkhārā concoct – deliberate or instinctive, driving or drifting – can be witnessed. We can notice the surge of glee or despond, the lure of achievement, and the itch to get more. But we can focus on these impressions, heart-patterns and programs just as they are, rather than believing ‘this is me’; ‘this is mine’; ‘I take my stand on this’; or even ‘I am different from all this stuff.’ This is the focus of insight. It’s about witnessing programs: how they depend on self-views, how they arise based on feeling, attract a grasping, lead to the creation of ideas and notions, create a self – and so keep saṃsāra rolling on. With insight, you contemplate the rigmarole of success and failure, of what I am and what I will be: it’s all more kamma, more self-view, more stuff to get busy with. But if you see the endlessness of all that, you work with the self-patterning and cut off stressful programs. And that’s the only way to get free of kamma.
When that point becomes clear, deepening liberation depends on staying attentive and learning from what arises and passes through your awareness. Because when one relates to bodily, conceptual and emotional energies as programs, that doesn’t support the view ‘I am’. Being unsupported by that view, the basis of feeling is exposed; with disengagement and dispassion, that feeling doesn’t catch hold. But it’s like scratching an itch, or smoking a cigarette: even though you get the idea that it might be good to stop, your system won’t do it unless it gets an agreeable feel for the benefits of stopping, and you develop the resolve and skills to do so.
To this end, ethics place discernment where it most often needs to dwell; meditation blends body, thought and heart together into firmness, clarity and ease; and wise insight disbands the defective programs. Then we can handle life without getting thrown up and down by it. We don’t have to keep on proving ourselves, defending ourselves, creating ourselves as obligated, hopeless, misunderstood and so on. Kamma, and a heap of suffering, can cease.
Excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto
Once you’ve established a good foundation for meditation, you can pay attention to breathing in and breathing out. To be clear and attentive to breathing through the period of one whole inhalation and one whole exhalation and on to the next in a sustained way, reveals and unravels compulsive mind-states. Thus freed, the citta’s full potential can be realized; this is a powerful practice.
You can enter this practice by using a mantra such as ‘Buddho’, thinking ‘Bud-’ as you breathe in, so that the syllable extends over the entirety of that bodily process. Then do the same with ‘-dho’ on the out-breath. You can also initiate evaluation by adding the questions: ‘How do I know I am breathing?’ And then: ‘How is that?’ Use just enough to keep the mind engaged; you don’t need a lot of thinking – you just need to engage its receptive aspect. You may then notice that the direct experience of breathing arises as a sense of swelling, tightening and subsiding in the upper body as a whole. And sense it as a rhythmic flow of sensations and flushes. Of these, the most obvious aspects are the purely physical ones – for example, the repeated swelling of the chest or the abdomen, and the tightening and relaxing of the skin. More refined than these is the flow of air through the nose and down the back of the throat. And there’s also the subtle energetic effect: as you breathe in, you get a brightening effect, and as you breathe out, you get a quiet, calming effect. These are three strata of breath experience. Given time, you can discern them all.
The energetic effect is even discernible in non-breathing parts such as the face, hands and even the legs. This energy is intelligent. It seems to know what to do; so, you can relax. If the mind doesn’t interfere, breathing settles and calms by itself. Even when you’re asleep or distracted, this intelligent system takes care of itself. And if you can connect your mind and heart to it, this involuntary flow of brightening and soothing energy brightens and calms the citta.
Don’t force a tight focus. The Buddha doesn’t mention focusing on one point in the body, or even on the breath; rather, he speaks more in terms of being receptive to the kāya-saṇkhāra, the overall process of breathing. The discourse on mindfulness of breathing simply instructs: ‘Know you’re breathing in, and know you’re breathing out.’ So, the recommendation is just to be aware of the ‘in-out’, the rhythm. To me that’s significant, because rhythm has a heart effect. Every musician, every parent rocking a baby, knows that. If focusing feels tense, try receiving the rhythm – say the slight swell in the chest, or even the belt around your waist tightening and loosening; it should be something that keeps coming back so it is easily noted. So be aware of the body as a pattern of repeated sensations that occur with the breathing. When you pick up the repetitive quality, you’ll discern the energy, because that’s the source of that flowing vitality.
The training is to get simple. Give yourself whatever time you need to simplify – this alone reverses the trends of a lifetime. And when you lose focus, don’t make a problem out of it. That could turn another citta habit around. So just notice when you’ve drifted off, and at that point ask: ‘What’s happening with breathing right now?’ Then pick up whatever sensation comes to the fore connected with breathing. That makes the practice accessible. You’re probably shifting ingrained programs just by not pushing. Then, as you get lighter and simpler, the rest of the practice follows.
As your mind tunes in, you can refine the process by attuning to the full length of the breath. This gets you in touch with the ending of an out-breath, with its release and stillness; and with the complete fullness and stillness at the completion of an inhalation. This steady moving in and out of stillness is an aspect of bodily energy that we often miss out on in our normal way of life. But giving yourself the time to attune to the breathing allows you to be with that movement. And as you train ‘thoroughly sensitive to the entire body, breathing in … breathing out’, you attune to the body’s energies as they brighten, refresh and relax. This represents an important shift of attention from the rational or visual bases that normally dominate our lives. The sense-base of the body is highly sensitive and responsive: when I touch something, it touches me. So, when that contact is easeful, there is a sense of trust. And when one trusts, the energy relaxes, and the heart brightens. Hence, being in touch with breathing brings sensitivity and relaxation: bright kamma.
This gives rise to somatic and emotional effects: one feels deeply relaxed and refreshed. This is the experience of rapture (pīti), a buoyant and refreshed state, and ease (sukha). Rapture and ease carry the sense of being in the flow with something. It’s not just that one is doing good, but that good things are happening. As we pick up the sense of that, the citta and the body become calm and the breathing gets softer, and the combined effects permeate the entire system. The thinking mind, the heart, and the body come together, and their unification is both bright and calm. That’s samādhi, or ‘right concentration’.
Samādhi is richer than the concentration that we might develop for solving problems, or when being absorbed in entertainment. These pursuits work by flooding rather than training attention: you don’t develop much skill in sensitizing and handling your programs when you’re watching the World Cup! Samādhi is a conscious consolidation of bodily, conceptual and heart energy, brought around by applying the mind, and keeping the entire conscious system alert, sensitive and contained. The right kind of consolidation depends on modifying intention and attention: you have to learn how to encourage interest, how to appreciate, how to let go, and how to enjoy. Learning these skills alone is a good enough reason to practise.
To recap: with bringing to mind and evaluation, one both primes and guides the attention with appropriate prompts. Ordinary discursive thinking generally makes the body feel more hard-edged or agitated, notably in the hands or the face (the ‘do-it’ parts of the body), or in the diaphragm (the ‘brace yourself’ area of the body). If these occur, ask: ‘How is my entire body now?’ to release the grip; then, when things feel balanced: ‘Where is the breathing now? What if I wait for the next out-breath, and just let that flow through the whole body?’ Letting the breathing happen by itself takes time and skill.
In the case of repetitive, obsessive thoughts, you might relate the thinking to the heart: there might be a sense of hurt beneath the complaining of the thoughts; or a giddy whirl that’s connected to a great idea. The unpleasant or pleasant feeling has to be attuned to, met, and opened around. Then: ‘Can I be with this feeling?’ So you stop fighting it or believing in it. Rather than analyse and scold yourself for wandering off again (‘how many times …!’ etc.) – just pause. You might benefit from a sympathetic inner voice: ‘How am I? May I be well …’ If the thoughtfulness is simple and caring, it can bear with and perhaps discharge the push of the feeling. Or you might ask: ‘Am I settled in terms of my body?’ And, as you feel the whole body settle down, at some time ask: ‘Why not flow with the breathing for now?’ It takes responsive clarity to bring the mind out of hankering and criticising, or being blanketed by drowsiness, worry or doubt.
As attention is steered into an unhindered source of energy, the heart can linger and enjoy. There can be a radiant, uplifting effect as the breath-energy permeates the entire body. The hard edges and stiffness of the body dissolve and the body is sensed more as an energetic field. Ease then stabilizes attention within that to counteract any giddiness or apprehension. When this develops as an enduring effect, it gives rise to the state of absorption (jhāna).
‘Bhikkhus, for a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous, no volition [cetanā] need be exerted: “Let non-regret arise in me.” It is natural that non-regret arises in a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous.
‘For one without regret no volition need be exerted: “Let joy arise in me.” It is natural that joy arises in one without regret.
‘For one who is joyful no volition need be exerted: “Let rapture arise in me.” It is natural that rapture arises in one who is joyful.
‘For one with a rapturous mind no volition need be exerted: “Let my body be tranquil.” It is natural that the body of one with a rapturous mind is tranquil.
‘For one tranquil in body no volition need be exerted: “Let me feel pleasure.” It is natural that one tranquil in body feels pleasure.
‘For one feeling pleasure no volition need be exerted: “Let my mind be concentrated.” It is natural that the mind of one feeling pleasure is concentrated.
‘For one who is concentrated no volition need be exerted: “Let me know and see things as they really are.” It is natural that one who is concentrated knows and sees things as they really are.
‘For one who knows and sees things as they really are no volition need be exerted: “Let me be disenchanted and dispassionate.” It is natural that one who knows and sees things as they really are is disenchanted and dispassionate.
‘For one who is disenchanted and dispassionate no volition need be exerted: “Let me realize the knowledge and vision of “liberation.” It is natural that one who is disenchanted and dispassionate realizes the knowledge and vision of liberation.’
(A.10:2; B. Bodhi, trans.)
Another major distortion is the assumption that thinking will make our lives happy and solid – that pre-judgement sets up all kinds of stress. We might, for example, become an incessant thinker, or someone who delights in thinking and enjoys generating ideas. Of course, some ideas are interesting, and it’s great to link up a remembered fact with an imaginative proposal and start nudging them towards a conclusion. And yet this inner speech can be so absorbing that we don’t see or think beyond the range of what we already know or have an attitude around; so we get tunnel vision, become obsessive and lose that open awareness within which one’s ideas can be held in a broader perspective, other people’s angles and sensitivities listened to, and the energy of thinking can be peacefully relaxed. In fact, if the energies of conceiving and evaluating, planning and speculating can’t be moderated or discharged, the system burns out with nervous stress.[22]
However, thinking about how to stop thinking only adds more energy and conflict to the mix. This is why meditative training directs thinking. You skim off what’s unskilful or unnecessary to consider right now, then steer your thoughtfulness towards the grounded presence of the body, taking in how it feels.
In this way, you steady the body, and through focusing on calm, repetitive experiences such as walking at a moderate pace, or breathing in a full and relaxed way from the abdomen, allow the citta to relax and open. Spreading attention slowly over the body as if in a slow massage is another good approach, one that adopts citta’s response to pleasure. You also can do this while standing, using the sense of balance to steady the mind. Take the time to notice the feeling of space around your body; then sit, walk or stand feeling that space, doing nothing more than being present with the embodied system. Deepen into simple moment-by-moment attitudes of well-wishing: ‘May I be well’ … ‘May others be well.’
I suggest this approach because attitude affects intention, which is the leader in the programming process. For many people, the energy of intention is set to the hyperactive mode of the business model: ‘You’ve got to work hard. Get out there and make it work for you.’ But if your heart is passionate or forceful, then your body gets signals to give you more energy, so your nervous system gets overstimulated and you tense up. Just notice how much nervous energy you can expend in getting emotionally worked up about things; notice how draining that can be. So, in meditation, train yourself to find a balance of resolve and receptivity rather than sustain ideals or imperatives that you can’t back up through the body’s energy or are beyond your psychological capacity. ‘Sitting here until I realize complete enlightenment’ is more likely to rupture your knee ligaments and stir up psychological turmoil than achieve the desired result.
A downshift in terms of speed and goals is a major shift. But you can begin by adjusting your attitude to one that makes the mind workable, fluid and curious. You move from ‘I’ve got to get it right’ to ‘How is this? Let’s take things a moment at a time.’ With this, you steady your energy, and use attitudes and intentions that bring your heart into play – so that it will be a supportive participant in this interconnected process.
This meditative kamma can then tone up the basis of all your intelligences; this brings around bodily ease, interrupts compulsive or habitual thinking, and also enables you to exercise authority over what you think about and how. And as this is about resetting your own conscious system, you can take the practice and its results with you wherever you go.
Let’s get on with the practice. Since how you attend as well as what you attend to affect the heart – and that’s where our self-impression (and its kamma) arises – it’s important to begin right there. Recollections of the Triple Gem, and of one’s ethical standards and good kamma, steadily applied, dispel worry and distraction and encourage the heart, so that you approach your experience in a peaceful but decisive way.
For this, you have to exercise authority over thinking. Because the mind is geared to this verbal activity, it easily picks up and follows trains of thought that take you away from your bodily presence, and from a cool place where they could be witnessed. So, one of the skills of meditation is to lightly apply thoughtful attention – without thinking of anything. It’s as if you’re about to think, and then, feeling the energy of your thinking, you steady it so that you can use it to lightly label an experience. Walking, you simply notice ‘walking’; breathing, you notice ‘this is breathing in … this is breathing out.’ Then, as you place your attention on these simple themes, you’re receptive, as in: ‘How is this?’
Any kind of thinking operates through this two-fold process. Firstly, the rational mind scans for a sensory impression or a heart-impression and names it: ‘cow’, ‘bell’. This is ‘bringing to mind’ or ‘placing thoughtfulness’, vitakka. In tandem with that, there is a momentary review to check out if the concept really fits, or to evaluate what attention has been placed on, as in: ‘the cow is speckled, and seems agitated.’ This evaluation is the more receptive aspect of thinking, vicāra. Evaluation connects to the citta by listening deeply. In meditation, you use it to listen out for the felt sense of bodily experience, such as ‘this sensation feels sharp’ or ‘this breath feels long and fades gently.’ These felt senses aren’t simply feeling (= pleasant or painful), nor are they full-blown meanings – such as ‘I’m being stabbed’ or ‘my body is dissolving.’ Many felt senses are quite neutral and don’t evoke much, but they provide an ongoing reference to direct experience – and that is grounding. As with the body: ‘Right now my body is just a sense of warmth, of solidity and rhythmic energies.’ That’s a lot less stressful than ‘I look a mess. I’m too fat.’ So, in meditation, you use the simple felt senses of groundedness, spaciousness and natural rhythm to elicit the felt meaning ‘I am really here, there is no pressure around me, I feel safe.’ Just to be able to let a breath go all the way out, and have the time to wait and let the inhalation come in at its own rate and fill you, can give you an assurance that isn’t always there in social contact. When your heart gets that, you can think, speak and act from that safe and fully present place.
So, as you bring your heart and thought into line, turn them to whatever is the most stable pattern of physical sensations that occur as your body is sitting still: the pressure of your body against what it’s sitting on, the sense of the upright posture, etc. Learn to steady the body in the sitting position, and to set the body upright and relax what muscles aren’t needed (such as in the face or hands). That means applying thought and heart to find out how best to sit in order to maintain alertness without stress. It can take some time to find an even balance because of habitual bad posture or residual tension in the body.
Also practise finding that balance when you are standing and walking. Keep referring to two bases: the spine, and the space around it. So, try to sit, stand or walk in a way that brings the whole spine into alignment, from the top of the head to the tail, as if you were hanging upside down. Aim for a balance whereby the skeletal structure is carrying the majority of the weight, rather than the muscles: that lessens stress. Secondly, let your “body sense the openness around it. This helps to get the front of the body to relax.
Stay alert to nervous energy. A high-pressure, fast-paced lifestyle can turn the entire nervous system into a mass of jangling wires. These energy patterns can shift from relaxed to tense, or receptive to aroused with one sight, sound or thought. And it takes a lot longer to calm down than it does to get stirred up. This sensitive, impulsive and receptive experience of body is the area of kāya-saṇkhāra. Referring to the body as a system of energies helps you to be aware of how the body is affected, how to guard this sensitivity against being triggered, and how to then turn its energies to good use. Because, if it is steadied, embodied energy can be strengthening and bright.
So, if you get agitated or feel uncomfortable, or get lost in thought, keep coming back to these two reference points. The training is to keep your thinking minimal. This channels its energy and thereby brings around a more balanced state. This is necessary because although the verbal program is powered by an impulse to define and plan, it acquires distortions when out of anxiety we get lost in planning. So, thinking can carry an emotional bias, and can hastily prejudge an experience – ‘seeing’ the cow as threatening because we are nervous around cows. [Continued next week: 26 September 2024]
"To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. . . I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." – Elliott Erwin (Documentary photographer)
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