There is a wonderful book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by the scientist Robert Sapolsky. The thesis of it is that if you are a zebra, you are on the menu for the average lion out on the savannah. When you see a lion coming towards you, you need stress and you need to get stressed fast. Zebras need to be afraid. They need to move quickly. They get as much sugar into the system as possible, get the heart beating rapidly and pump the whole system with adrenalin, so they can move as quickly as possible. Within a couple of minutes, either they will have got away or they will have been caught and killed. So, they only need to stay stressed for a couple of minutes.

We human beings however, can keep it going for a couple of months or years, so we get ulcers. The stress reaction is sustained through our papañca, through our conceptual thought and our capacity to remember and imagine. We start incessantly imagining, can’t let go of painful things in the past, or what might happen in the future. We create ongoing anxiety, maintain the stress reaction hour after hour, day after day, week after week. We make ourselves ill with anxiety, restlessness, rage, rapacity and depression.

So, if you want to avoid ulcers you need to work on papañca. Papañca (conceptual proliferation) is the habit of buying into our thoughts, believing in them and creating images of past and future, and going off and inhabiting them — building castles in the air and going to live there.

 We find ourselves in the situation: “me here and the world out there.” There is a state of tension between the two, either tension with something I want which I haven’t got, or something I’m afraid is going to get me and want to get away from. There is a duality. And that subject-object duality is rigidly fixed into place, and the dukkha arising from that. This whole process, from the beginning with the simple perception through to the end with “me here” and “the world out there”, happens very quickly. So, learning to track this process and seeing how it begins requires the development of mindfulness and wisdom. The mind has to be trained not to follow the habitual pathways of papañca.

When you see the mind has wandered off into some kind of conceptual labyrinth, into trains of thought and association, take the trouble to follow it back. This is the practice of following the string of thoughts and associations back to its origin. It might not seem a terribly fruitful exercise, but in my experience, it is very revealing. Over and over again we realize that the mind gets caught up in excitements or fantasies, fears and anxieties, or gets lost in rewriting the past, and that all this is completely void of substance.

We also go back and revisit mistakes we made, glorious moments, or things which were memorable or painful — we re-inhabit them and bring them to life. Whenever we are aware that the mind is caught up in a proliferation, we need to take the trouble to catch that process like netting a butterfly. Catch that thought. Actually, a butterfly is a very appropriate symbol, since the Greek word “psyche” means not just “the mind” but “butterfly”. So, a psychologist is someone who studies this very butterfly nature.

So, catch that particular fluttering piece of papañca, and follow the sequence of thoughts and associations back to where they came from. Every time we will notice that it was started by just a random thought that popped into the mind — there was a smell from the kitchen which triggered the memory of a particular food, or the sight of somebody’s shawl triggered the memory of Aunt Matilda’s dress. Following it back, we realize that it was just a smell, just a sound, just a random memory. That is all. When we get to the source, the origin, it is utterly unburdensome, uncomplicated.

The further you trace it back to the source, the less there is a sense of a “me here” and “the world out there” – a solidly, definitely divided experience. There is just hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. “In the heard there is only the heard, in the hearing there is only the hearing.” The same with seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. There is no sense of self embedded within that. It is just the world as it is experienced.

We tend to think, “I am in here, the world is out there, and I am perceiving the world.” But I find it extremely helpful to keep recognizing that we don’t experience the world — we experience our mind’s representation of the world. This is something that the Buddha pointed to (e.g., at S 2.26, S 35.116): “That in the world by which one is a perceiver of the world, a conceiver of the world — this is called “the world” in the Noble One’s discipline. And what is it in the world though which one does that? It is with the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body and the mind.” That is “the world” in terms of the Buddha’s teaching. Obviously, we can talk about this planet as being the world, or the stars and galaxies and space being the world. But it is important to recognize that when we are trying to live in a reflective way, develop the qualities of wisdom and understanding and free the heart, the most helpful way of understanding the world is just exactly as I have been describing — the world is sights, sounds, smells, taste, touch, thought. That is the world because that is the world as we know it.

I’m not saying that the whole world is an illusion conjured up by us as individuals. There is a substrate. There is a basis on which our perceptions are formed. But what we know about the world is constructed from the information that our senses weave together. That is the coordinating capacity of the mind. The mind is the sixth sense which draws the first five senses together and coordinates them. The world the mind creates is the world that we know. The world is put together by our minds. These perceptions are all we can know. All we have ever known has been through the agency of this mind. We create a world where things have colors — this is black, that is brown — but these are constructed realities, fabricated perceptions. They don’t have any intrinsic existence. “Personhood,” “individuality”, our name is a construct, as is our notion of individuality. We construct these things and live with them for useful reasons. But the more we take them to be absolute truths, then the more we are stuck in sīlabbata parāmāsa, attachment to conventions.

When we recognize that the world is created through our thoughts and perceptions, that we build this world, that it is a caused, dependent thing, we can also see that it arises and therefore ceases. It is a process that is known through our awareness, and it is in this awareness that “the world ends”.

Once the world is known for what it is, once we have seen the comings and goings of the world — the world is caused, the world arises, the world ceases — the heart is able to be freed from identification with the world, the heart is liberated from the world.

Ajahn Amaro
Excerpts from a longer article titled: “Puncture Your Papañca”: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-021-01746-x

The article was transcribed from a talk titled: “Conceptual Proliferation (Papañca)”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzUPNw8YTCY

Ajahn Chah
[Excerpts from a longer Dhamma talk titled: The Path to Peace]
It is the mind which gives orders to the body. The body has to depend on the mind before it can function. However, the mind itself is constantly subject to different objects contacting and conditioning it before it can have any effect on the body. As you turn attention inwards and reflect on the Dhamma, the wisdom faculty gradually matures, and eventually, you are left contemplating the mind and mind-objects, which means that you start to experience the body, rūpadhamma, as arūpadhamma, formless. Through your insight, you’re no longer uncertain in your understanding of the body and the way it is. The mind experiences the body’s physical characteristics as arūpadhamma or formless objects, which come into contact with the mind. Ultimately, you’re contemplating just the mind and mind-objects—those objects which come into your consciousness. Now, examining the true nature of the mind, you can observe that in its natural state, it has no preoccupations or issues prevailing upon it. It’s like a piece of cloth or a flag that has been tied to the end of a pole—as long as it’s on its own and undisturbed, nothing will happen to it. A leaf on a tree is another example. Ordinarily, it remains quiet and unperturbed. If it moves or flutters, this must be due to the wind, an external force. Normally, nothing much happens to leaves—they remain still. They don’t go looking to get involved with anything or anybody. When they start to move, it must be due to the influence of something external, such as the wind, which makes them swing back and forth. It’s a natural state. The mind is the same. In it, there exists no loving or hating, nor does it seek to blame other people. It is independent, existing in a state of purity that is truly clear, radiant and untarnished. In its pure state, the mind is peaceful, without happiness or suffering—indeed, not experiencing any feeling at all. This is the true state of the mind. The purpose of practice, then, is to seek inwardly, searching and investigating until you reach the original mind; also known as the Pure Mind, the mind without attachment.”

The Pure Mind doesn’t get affected by mind-objects. In other words, it doesn’t chase after the different kinds of pleasant and unpleasant mind-objects. Rather, the mind is in a state of continuous knowing and wakefulness, thoroughly mindful of all its experiencing. When the mind is like this, no pleasant or unpleasant mind-objects it experiences will be able to disturb it. The mind doesn’t become anything. In other words, nothing can shake it. Why? Because there is awareness. The mind knows itself as pure. It has evolved its own true independence, has reached its original state. How is it able to bring this original state into existence? Through the faculty of mindfulness wisely reflecting and seeing that all things are merely conditions arising out of the influence of elements, without any individual being controlling them.”

“This is how it is with the happiness and suffering we experience. When these mental states arise, they’re just happiness and suffering. There’s no owner of the happiness. The mind is not the owner of the suffering—mental states do not belong to the mind. Look at it for yourself. In reality, these are not affairs of the mind, they’re separate and distinct. Happiness is just the state of happiness; suffering is just the state of suffering.”

You are merely the knower of these things. In the past, because the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion already existed in the mind, whenever you caught sight of the slightest pleasant or unpleasant mind-object, the mind would react immediately—you would take hold of it and have to experience either happiness or suffering. You would be continuously indulging in states of happiness and suffering. That’s the way it is as long as the mind doesn’t know itself—as long as it’s not bright and illuminated. The mind is not free. It is influenced by whatever mind-objects it experiences. In other words, it is without a refuge, unable to truly depend on itself. You receive a pleasant mental impression and get into a good mood. The mind forgets itself. In contrast, the original mind is beyond good and bad. This is the original nature of the mind. If you feel happy over experiencing a pleasant mind-object, that is delusion. If you feel unhappy over experiencing an unpleasant mind-object, that is delusion. Unpleasant mind-objects make you suffer and pleasant ones make you happy—this is the world. Mind-objects come with the world. They are the world. They give rise to happiness and suffering, good and evil, and everything that is subject to impermanence and uncertainty.

As you reflect like this, penetrating deeper and deeper inwards, the mind becomes progressively more refined, going beyond the coarser defilements. The more firmly the mind is concentrated, the more resolute in the practice it becomes. The more you contemplate, the more confident you become. The mind becomes truly stable – to the point where it can’t be swayed by anything at all. You are absolutely confident that no single mind-object has the power to shake it. Mind-objects are mind-objects; the mind is the mind. The mind experiences good and bad mental states, happiness and suffering, because it is deluded by mind-objects. If it isn’t deluded by mind-objects, there’s no suffering. The undeluded mind can’t be shaken. This phenomenon is a state of awareness, where all things and phenomena are viewed entirely as dhātu (natural elements) arising and passing away – just that much. It might be possible to have this experience and yet still be unable to fully let go. Whether you can or can’t let go, don’t let this bother you. Before anything else, you must at least develop and sustain this level of awareness or fixed determination in the mind. You have to keep applying the pressure and destroying defilements through determined effort, penetrating deeper and deeper into the practice.

Having discerned the Dhamma in this way, the mind will withdraw to a less intense level of practice, which the Buddha and subsequent Buddhist scriptures describe as the Gotrabhū citta. The Gotrabhū citta refers to the mind which has experienced going beyond the boundaries of the ordinary human mind. It is the mind of the puthujjana (ordinary unenlightened individual) breaking through into the realm of the ariyan (Noble One) – however, this phenomenon still takes place within the mind of the ordinary unenlightened individual like ourselves. The Gotrabhū puggala is someone, who, having progressed in their practice until they gain temporary experience of Nibbāna (enlightenment), withdraws from it and continues practising on another level, because they have not yet completely cut off all defilements. It’s like someone who is in the middle of stepping across a stream, with one foot on the near bank, and the other on the far side. They know for sure that there are two sides to the stream, but are unable to cross over it completely and so step back. The understanding that there exist two sides to the stream is similar to that of the Gotrabhū puggala or the Gotrabhū citta. It means that you know the way to go beyond the defilements, but are still unable to go there, and so step back. Once you know for yourself that this state truly exists, this knowledge remains with you constantly as you continue to practise meditation and develop your pāramī. You are both certain of the goal and the most direct way to reach it.

Editor’s note: I found a section of this talk in the website “Path and Press: an existential approach to the Buddha’s Teaching.” From here I found a reference to the original source: “The Path to Peace. Here are the links”

https://pathpress.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/ajahn-chah-and-the-original-mind/

https://www.ajahnchah.org/book/Path_Peace.php#foot6828

[Excerpts from an article by Ajahn Sucitto]

In the flow of events of people and things and ups and downs, I get jangled and tense. Is there an end to this?’ It’s good to remember one of Ajahn Chah’s sayings: ‘The only thing that has to end is the desire that it all end.’ Kamma, the restless search of the self: that’s what has to end. We’re living in the field of kamma, of mental patterns and programs that have been established in us from what we’ve participated in. And as long as we’re centred in and attached to, that field of kamma, we are in the ups and downs of ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ duality of ‘me and other.’ Subject/object, experienced as ‘I and myself’ – in which ‘I’ becomes the agent, the cause and ‘me’ is the mind-state that I refer to at any given time. These two breed the notion of ‘myself’ an ongoing accumulation of what I’ve done or what has happened to me. Sometimes ‘I’ don’t like ‘myself’ and the mind projects a range of other possibles and desirables on how my ‘self’ could be. Consciousness creates more and more possibles to get, or get away from, to become: the impulse is to act. More kamma, is created dependent on how good or bad myself seems to be.

It means we remain in the game of winning and losing, subject to the agency of cause and effect that can only bring ‘not-quite enough’ as a result. The Buddha called it ‘dukkha’, the ‘unsatisfied’ sense. ‘All that arises is of the nature of dukkha, and all that ceases is dukkha.’ That’s the nature of the game of cause and effect. But the ‘I’ sense can’t get out of the game (even with death, there is re-birth): so maybe I’m fairly okay for a while, but not completely okay – when you reflect on it, the ‘me’ sense can never be okay, because holding on to anything changeable and unstable must give rise to dukkha. We can attribute this dukkha to domestic situations or cosmic laws, but isn’t the basis of dukkha in any situation the ‘me’ sense that tags onto it? If the ‘me’ sense is not involved, things are just the way they are: the restlessness, the hurt feeling, the thirst can cease of their own accord. It is a mindful and compassionate holding of present conditions, holding past reactions and hopes and assumptions, to be with how things really are.

Contact and interpretation create kamma

Where I’ve lived for the past of couple of years, there is building work going on; the sound of electric saws and people banging and crashing. So, I have to manage this. The sound itself is doing what sound is supposed to do. Sounds have no malice in them. Yet they impinge on my mindfulness of breathing in a random and incisive way. And when they do, they get interpreted as invasive, intrusive, and agitating. What is simply a sound, becomes a perception, and the fresh kamma impulse is: ‘Let me get out of here.’ However, I watch and check my reactions, because following the agitation of the mind gives agitated results. So, I work with the perception instead; I listen to the sound and reflect on how my mind is interpreting it. Reflecting on it this way I can make the sound a meditation object, a moment at a time. Then it becomes something that is neutral, the mind can leave it alone, and there’s no need to ‘defend’ the mind against the sound.

Review attitudes and assumptions

One doesn’t hang on to contact-impressions; and any of the ‘me’ positions. The mind can open its awareness of a state, and slip into that awareness rather than inro any of the perceptions and interpretations that arise along with it. Then mind-states don’t have to arise; to that extent we’re out of the loop of kamma. Of course, not creating a state is easier said than done, and there are all kinds of triggers of kamma, but they teach us that suffering and stress only stop with letting go. So, it’s good when one has the simple opportunity to focus on having one’s buttons pushed: we can notice where the hanging on is occurring and bring a focus to that.

Say I start off with a perception that meditation that equals quiet, equals things happening in a very steady way. Although there’s a lot of truth to that idea, often we can’t start from that place, we have to start in the jungle of the heart. Our challenge is to find a wise foundation in that jungle of the heart without going into, ‘Oh I can’t, my mind’s a mess. No, no, this isn’t it. I can’t do it.’ If we set up the perception of meditation as something serene, then it’s very difficult to start meditating at all. The wise way is to begin where you are: with hindrances, defilements, past kamma, confusion, wondering how to get it right, getting it wrong – and work with being able to witness and let go of those mind-states. You find support in the simplicity of the body’s presence, or the aspiration and spacious kindness of the mind that meets these challenges. Otherwise, the mind lingers and generates a self-view: ‘I am someone who is inherently lacking in something.’ Or it might generate a view: ‘Meditation is impossible.’ Such impressions are difficult and haunting.

The trick is to cultivate non-reactive attention… mindfulness to know the mood as a mood, as a condition that arises in the mind. Whether it’s me, the way I am, past kamma, or whatever, right now it’s an impression, a perception full of felt meaning. With that understanding as a support, mindfulness and full awareness can stand apart from the mood. We can say, ‘This is the mood. Let it be what it has to be. Moods feel like this.’ It’s the same as saying, ‘Hammers and electric saws sound like this.’ A mood is not a person. It’s not something whose nature is fixed. Any fixing comes from the lingering bias of wanting to figure it out, control and change it; to be an ‘I’ who can get out of the mood, and a self who has done so.

If that bias isn’t relinquished, there is the arising of an ‘I’ who can’t control or get out of, it and this ‘I’ creates myself as a failure or whatever. So, however it operates this bias, called ‘conceit’, gives the potential ‘I am’ view its foothold: ‘I am a dumped-on being’, ‘I am an angry person’, and so on – then based upon this entity, the process continues: ‘Because I am this, well, I’ll do that’ or ‘Because I am this, I need some of that,’ and so forth. And so fresh kamma gets triggered based upon that fundamental inclination.

However, rather than generate conceit and views in our meditation, the encouragement is to attend to the confusion or passion or regret or doubt as it’s happening, so that we handle it, acknowledge its energies, its effects on the body. That disengagement from making anything out of it is what lets it pass.

Preparing the Meeting Place

This disengagement from self-view is a skill that seems modest and yet is liberating. It comes with the skill of fully meeting experience, rather than half meeting, half avoiding, or meeting it in order to do something to it or glean information, happiness, or enlightenment from it. Developing it takes time. It takes capacity as well as willingness, because our system isn’t always strong enough, clear enough, or balanced enough to meet things directly. It’s like when you’re sick, and your energies are low, the body’s not capable of carrying what it can when its healthy. And when the mind is tense, or undernourished, then it can’t handle stress so well as when it’s in balance. And sometimes it’s simply the case that an edgy mental state arises because of stressed physical condition. It’s not all inner demons!

Consequently, we need to prepare a meeting place, an awareness that can meet what arises without contracting. Doing just this is the ‘kamma that leads to the end of kamma.’ The basis of this is training in mindfulness: staying with contact without formulating a self and a reaction. This means that for a moment you cannot know how things should be, or what to do. Allow yourself this mindful uncertainty, that opens the essential space for a response rather than a reaction to arise. So, when the feeling and the impression or ‘meaning’ come up, just wait right there. Don’t work from previous models. Don’t make a ‘me’ out of it. Then hold your awareness where it subsides. This is the place where kamma can end: in that place where there’s no laying down of more residues. So, we practise handling attention, contact and volition, the will to do. And with skill in that, the world of ‘me and it’ changes by itself.

The best place to meet impressions is in mindfulness of the body. That is, if I sense the mind in terms of bodily as well as emotive results, or in terms of shifts of energy – say I feel a shrinking, or a flaring or a hardening – then that steadier meeting place has more capacity to receive rather than react than if I just take it all through the mind. The body doesn’t conceive; it doesn’t generate the ‘me’, that is the creation of the mind. Therefore, preparing the meeting place is about being embodied, staying very much with that bodily presence as we go about our lives. We already know this: we suggest someone sits down before we give them bad news; we take a deep breath before we embark on a challenge. But in Dhamma-practice we develop just this. It’s a matter of letting the entire system digest the experience, rather than the heart or head alone.

Another way in which we prepare the meeting place is in terms of the mode of attention. Attention can be reaching out to have and hold an agreeable experience. It can be contracted and withdrawn in order to minimise the impact of a disagreeable experience. ‘Now what will the next moment bring…’ The best place is to have attention aware of the space around things; so that I’m not drawn in or drawn out. Impressions don’t have to crystallise, so attention can be on the space as well as the thing, and the ‘me,’ helps the meeting to be more spacious and less impacting.

Finally, there’s volition, motivation: the ‘how’ I attend; so that the aim is for whatever is met to come to its place of rest. This ‘how’ motivates inquiry into direct experience. Then I can see when I stop making a big ‘I am’ and ‘I want’ and ‘I can’t stand this’ at the meeting place where contact and impressions arise. So kamma doesn’t keep getting created. This purity of mind is of non-attachment and non-pushing away. When the meeting place is prepared with body, heart and mind it inspires a ‘this world’ form of devotion. There is the willingness to be here and receive the uncomfortable and the frightening without tightening up around them. And in the present one can feel more spacious.

All that rests on good kamma. So, we honour the clear boundaries of morality, the present moment objectivity of mindfulness, the strength that comes from samadhi, the wisdom that comes with contemplating kamma and self. These are assets. We can benefit from developing them. And they are to be developed by working on them with the sensations and moods of our lives, from the coarse to the refined and sublime. The field of kamma is the best place to find the ending of kamma. And it’s the ending of that – the ceasing of habitual impressions and reactions – that comprises Awakening.

Ajahn Sucitto’s home page: https://ajahnsucitto.org/

[I was googling my way through a progression of Buddhist terms and landed on a listing of Ajahn Sumedho Dhamma talks and some transcripts in the 1980’s. There was one titled “Beyond Belief,” given in1988. The opening paragraphs caught my attention, particularly the statement, “The body is in the mind.”]

“From the appearance of the five khandhas – rupa, vedanā, saññā, sankhara, viññāṇa – and the unquestioned belief that they are oneself – then it always seems that the mind is in the body, doesn’t it?

To most people, if you ask, “Where’s your mind?” they will point to their head, or their hearts. But if you investigate the way things are, following the teachings of the Buddha, then you begin to realise that the body is in the mind.

Mind is really what comes first – the body is just the receptor. It’s a sensitive receptor, like a radio, or radar, or something like that. It’s not a person, it’s not anything other than merely an instrument. When that view of being within the five khandhas is seen through and let go of, then there’s a realisation of what we can call deathlessness.” [Ajahn Sumedho 1988]

[I stumbled over the word: ‘deathlessness,’ so I googled it: ‘Deathlessness refers to a condition where there is no death, because there is also no birth, no coming into existence, nothing made by conditioning, and therefore no time.’ Another one (linked to an article by Ajahn Amaro, which follows) describes ‘deathlessness’ as abiding in the consciousness that is completely beyond conditioned phenomena—neither supporting them nor supported by them.]

“One of the most significant teachings the Buddha gave on the subject of Deathlessness is what you might call the motto of Amaravati. When the monastery first opened, this theme was used by Luang Por Sumedho over and over again: ‘Mindfulness is the path to the deathless. Heedlessness is the path to death. The mindful never die. The heedless are as if dead already.’[Dhp 21] Over and over again, Luang Por Sumedho would use this as a topic. It’s one of the reasons why this monastery is called Amaravati, the Deathless Realm.

When there’s heedlessness, it is as if we are dead. It appears as if there is birth and death because the mind attaches to the born and dying. We don’t create the deathless. It is not something that can be lost or gained, it is awakened to, it is realized. And through its realization it is recognized that birth and death are just appearances, just a seeming. It is like the sun appearing to rise and appearing to set. It only does so because the earth is spinning. If the earth didn’t spin, the sun would appear to sit in the same place all the time. Birth and death appear to be happening, because of the mind’s attachment to sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. Being a good person, a bad person, success and failure, healthy and sick, gaining and losing; because of the mind’s attachment to all these births and deaths, it seems like we are being born and we’re dying.

As Luang Por Sumedho said over and over again: ‘There is nobody being born, nobody dying. It’s just conditions of mind that are changing. There is no person truly being born, no person who really dies.’ Because of the mind’s attachment to the world of perception, thought, feeling, memory, attachment to the four elements of the material world, it seems that way. It is very convincing.

The path of insight, the path of investigation, helps us to examine the nature of experience. What seems to be ‘me being born, moving around in that world out there, and who will die one day,’ when it is examined closely it’s recognized that the world is happening in our field of experience.

As the Buddha said: ‘That whereby one is a perceiver of the world, and a conceiver of the world, that is called “the world” in this Dhamma and discipline. And what is that whereby one is a perceiver of the world, and a conceiver of the world? The eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body, the mind …’[SN 35.116]

The world is the world of our experience. It’s our mind’s construction of the world. That is what is experienced. And that is born, takes shape and dissolves, moment by moment. The sounds (that we hear), the feelings of the body, moods of irritation, enthusiasm, alertness, sleepiness, comfort, discomfort, these are patterns of consciousness, organic patterns of change, arising, taking shape, dissolving. That is the world. There is no other world we can meaningfully speak about. We can only talk about the world of our own experience. Even if we use machines and devices to measure them, those patterns will still all appear only within the sphere of our perceptions.

When we take a statement like: ‘There is nobody born, there is nobody who dies, only conditions of mind that change,’ it is not to be believed or rejected, but to be picked up and explored. There is hearing (the sounds of our environment), the sound of a plane flying overhead, the sound of a bird. We say the sensation is ‘in my body, in me’; the sound of the plane is ‘outside me’. But they are both experienced in the same place. The bird is in the tree. The plane is high in the sky. But they are both known here in the mind.

The world is in the mind, the world we experience is woven by our mind; it is woven into being – arising, passing away – moment by moment. But that which knows the world, that which is the lokavidū – the knower of the world – what is that? Where is that? It is the most real thing there is, this quality of knowing, yet it has no shape, no form. It is not a person, it does not begin or end, it is not here or there. It is totally real but completely intangible. How mysterious. But when the heart is allowed to embody that quality of knowing, awakened awareness, then that is the realization of the Deathless, the Unborn and Undying itself. That which knows the born and dying is not the born and dying. That which knows inspiration is not inspired. That which knows regret and pain is not pained. That which knows suffering is not suffering. This is why liberation is possible.

When the Buddha said that ‘… the mindful do not die’, he did not mean that the body of a mindful person is never going to stop breathing and rot away. No. The Buddha’s body died, just like anyone else’s. When he said that the mindful never die, it meant that when the mind is awake it is not identified with the born and the dying. It is akāliko, timeless, ajāta, unborn, amara, undying. It is outside of the realm of time, individuality and space; not definable in terms of time, personality, location: ‘There is neither a coming nor a going, nor a standing still. Neither progress, nor degeneration. Neither this world, nor the other world.’[Ud 8.1] It boggles the mind: our familiar perceptions are formed in terms of here and there, inside and outside, mine and yours, progress, degeneration. But this quality of Dhamma itself – of which this awareness, this knowing faculty is the primary attribute – it is indefinable, unlocatable. As Luang Por Chah would ask: ‘If you can’t go forward and you can’t go back and you can’t stand still, where can you go?’ All that can be done is to let go of those habits of identifying with being a person who is here in this place and passing through time. When the mind lets go of time, individuality, location, then that puzzle is solved.”

Excerpts from a Dhamma article by Ajahn Amaro – Mindfulness is the Path to the Deathless, 26th May 2016

Original:https://amaravati.org/dhamma-article-ajahn-amaro-mindfulness-path-deathless/

Ajahn Sumedho, “Beyond Belief” 1988, transcript, original:https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/essay/beyond-belief

[Excerpts from an article by Nic Higham]

1. The inward-facing path differentiates between our self and the objects of experience. It is a path of negation, exclusion and elimination: I am not this, not this. In theological terms, it is the Via Negativa; in the Zen tradition, the Great Death. On this Path we discover what we are not. It is the movement in understanding from ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’ the path of wisdom or discrimination. The mind turns its attention away from objective experience towards its own essence or reality. This is the essence of meditation or prayer.

In meditation the simple experience of being aware is extricated from everything that we are aware of and the mind falls inwards. As it does so it is gradually (occasionally, or suddenly) divested of its finite, limited qualities and, at some point, stands revealed as pure mind, original mind or infinite consciousness – the fundamental, underlying reality of the apparent duality of mind and matter.

The culmination of the inward-facing path is the recognition of the presence, the primacy and the nature of awareness – or, in religious language, spirit or God’s infinite being – which transcends all knowledge and experience. However, it is not yet the full experiential understanding in which awareness itself, or God’s infinite being, is known and felt to pervade and saturate all knowledge and experience, and indeed to be its sole substance and reality. It is to recognise the transcendent nature of awareness but not its immanence.

2. The outward-facing path is one of openness, inclusion and allowing: I am this, am this. It is a path in which the apparent separation between our self and anyone or anything is dissolved. It is a path of unconditional love. It is the Via Positiva. It is the Great Rebirth in the Zen tradition. This path is the means by which we recognise the inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled nature of our being. It is the cure for suffering, the direct path to peace and happiness.

In the outward-facing path we recognise that our being is shared with everyone and everything. It is the remedy for conflict and the means by which kindness, harmony and justice are restored to humanity. On this Path we discover what we are. The movement in understanding from ‘I am nothing’ through ‘I am everything’ to simply ‘I’ could be called the path of love. This is also the moment at which the traditional spiritual path of renunciation becomes the Tantric path of embrace and inclusion. It is the moment at which the full spectrum of experience is welcomed, explored and celebrated for what it truly is.

In the final stage of this exploration the distinction between consciousness and its objects collapses completely. Experience is not just known by consciousness; it does not just appear in consciousness; consciousness is all there is to experience. To begin with, as we take our stand knowingly as aware Presence, the mind, body and world recede into the background. When the presence and primacy of our self has been established, objects come close again, closer than close. They dissolve into our self and reveal themselves as none other than the shape that our self is taking from moment to moment. Presence is so utterly and intimately one with every appearance, it says ‘Yes’ so unreservedly to every experience, that it is also known as love.

So, to summarise, we move from the formulation, ‘I am something’ to ‘I am nothing’, from ‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am everything, from’ I am everything’ to ‘I am’ or ‘Awareness is, from there to simply ‘I’ and from ‘I’ to… we truly fall silent there. To begin with, we understand objects as appearing to Consciousness. Then we understand that they appear in Consciousness. Then we understand that they appear as Consciousness. Consciousness knows itself in and as the totality of experience. Once the essential, irreducible nature of the mind has been recognised, and its inherent peace and unconditional joy accessed, it is necessary to face ‘outwards’ again towards objective experience, realigning the way we think and feel, and subsequently act, perceive and relate, with our new understanding.

Excerpts from an article by Nic Higham

[Credit: Rupert Spira
The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter – by Rupert Spira
Being Aware of Being Aware – by Rupert Spira
The Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience – by Rupert Spira
Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness – by Rupert Spira
Being Myself – by Rupert Spira
Presence, Volume II: The Intimacy of All Experience – by Rupert Spira]

Link to Nic Higham’s original: https://nisargayoga.org/what-are-the-inward-and-outward-facing-paths/

A Short Editorial: recent pages of this blog tell the story of how the Buddha’s Teachings in 500 BCE spread from North India by way of the Old Silk Road to the Far-East, and by the 7th Century CE, Buddhism had been accepted in every country in Asia. Also, a mention is made on the extraordinary effort of Early Chinese Buddhists who wanted to study the original Buddhist Scriptures and made the overland journey from Eastern China back to North India on foot, a distance of some 4000 miles, not including the return journey to China. It is noted that travellers on the trade routes also brought Buddhism to the West from North India, through the Middle East and Greece… but there it went no further. Buddhism remained completely unknown in Europe for about two thousand years!

The obstruction was caused by the Early Christian Church, and I think it’s important not to avert the eye from this part of our history because, for one thing, it explains why I’m burdened with Christian guilt even though I been a Buddhist for the last 30 years. I found a book in India that gave me some ease from this heavy weight I’ve been made to carry, and last week the blog had a section on the author, Keith Sherwood’s views on the Christian concept of ‘Separation.’ The following sections of text were not included in last week’s post.

“Although Jesus came preaching that each person was inherently like Him and that they had direct access to the Father (the universal field of energy and consciousness) by surrendering to Him through the person of the Holy Spirit, Christian theology became rigid and dogmatic, emphasizing the form rather than the spirit of Jesus’ teaching. In the Judaic tradition there is the belief that the Hebrew people are chosen by God but have become separated from Him and the Jewish people are inherently different from their brothers, inherently separate.  At the heart of these notions is the institutionalisation of separation.

We don’t accept a person’s original state as one of separation, and we don’t accept separation as objectively the truth. Although a person might not experience their inner life consciously and might do those things which constantly push them further from an experience of it, it remains that on the unconscious level they have never been separate and can never be separate from the universal field. S/he exists within the universal field whether they believe it or not, or whether they consciously experience it or not. S/he has always been and always will be in the Tao, Brahma, what Christians call the “mind of Christ.” Moreover, on the unconscious level they continually experience, communicate, and receive nourishment from the universal field.” [Excerpts from ‘Chakra Therapy’ by Keith Sherwood]

So, I’ve come to understand and accept that this is simply how it is. I have to find my way back to ‘the universal field of consciousness.’ In the course of this investigation, I discovered the following piece by Rupert Spira on Yoga Meditation, which has helped me tremendously in freeing the body from ‘the tyranny of concepts and images’ that has its origins in the indoctrination of Christian Separation.

[A note first, by Rupert Spira, about non-duality: “Non-duality is the recognition that underlying the multiplicity and diversity of experience there is a single, infinite and indivisible reality, whose nature is pure consciousness, from which all objects and selves derive their apparently independent existence. The recognition of this reality is not only the source of lasting happiness within all people; it is the foundation of peace between individuals, communities and nations, and it must be the basis for any sustainable relationship with the environment.”]

Many people who have a clear understanding that their essential nature is ever-present, unlimited consciousness, awareness or knowing continue to feel that they are located within and share the limits and destiny of the body.

It’s like the old Zen master who, when asked on his death bed how he was, replied, ‘Everything is fine, but my body is having a hard time keeping up’. Although his mind was spacious and clear, there was still some aspect of his experience that had not yet been fully colonised by his understanding.

Likewise, for many people who have been on a spiritual path for years, if not decades, there is often a discrepancy between their understanding and the way they feel the body and perceive the world. In spite of the fact that we understand that reality is a single, infinite and indivisible whole, made of pure, empty, luminous awareness, we still feel that our body is something solid, dense, limited and located, and that the world is something other than ourself, at a distance from ourself, made out of solid, dense, inert stuff called matter.

The purpose of yoga meditation, or the outward-facing path, is to realign the way we feel the body and perceive the world with non-dual understanding. This realignment of our experience takes place naturally over time, but the purpose is to cooperate with that process. In this exploration we are only interested in the felt experience of the body – not the idea, the image or the memory of the body – and the actual experience of the world – that is, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.

For many people, their feeling of the body is so profoundly filtered through their idea or image of the body that it seems to conform to it. So, in these contemplations we go deeply into the raw experience of the body, tasting it from the inside, liberating it from the tyranny of concepts and images, experiencing it as it is – transparent, empty, luminous, weightless, free – without the slightest rejection of any aspect of experience.

Likewise, we learn to perceive the world in a way that is consistent with the non-dual understanding, namely, that everything is the activity or vibration of consciousness, which, filtered through the limitations of our own minds, appears as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves.

This is the vision of the world presented by the great poets and artists. They are the free-thinkers for whom the unity of being has not been eclipsed by the apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves, each separate and distinct from one another. As the German poet Lisel Mueller said, ‘I will not return to a universe of objects that do not know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent’.

Artists are those who are free enough and humble enough not to mistake the limitations of their own mind for reality, but who realise that what we see is but a partial view of reality. That’s why William Blake said, ‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way’. The world is not what we see; it is the way we see.

Consider the possibility that nature or reality is the imagination or activity of one universal consciousness that assumes the form of each of our minds, through which it refracts itself into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves.

William Blake, again, said, ‘Every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight enclosed by the five senses.’ In other words, the pure delight or joy that accompanies the knowledge of simply being – that is, consciousness’s knowledge of itself – refracts itself through the limited faculties of thought and sense perception and appears to itself as objective experience, without ever actually being or becoming anything other than its own infinite, indivisible self. As the Sufis say in religious language, ‘Wherever you look, there is the face of God’.

Rilke expressed the same idea, in his Sonnets to Orpheus, ‘Dare to say what “apple” truly is. This sweetness that feels thick, dark, dense at first; then, exquisitely lifted in your taste, grows clarified, awake and luminous, double-meaninged, sunny, earthy, real – Oh knowledge, pleasure –inexhaustible.’

Through yoga meditation, we attempt to feel the body and perceive the world in a way that is consistent with the understanding that the universe is the activity of a single, infinite and indivisible whole, made of pure, empty, luminous consciousness. This is the means by which we feel and live the non-dual understanding at all levels of our experience.

Rupert Spira

I have this eyesight difficulty (AMD) that’s here to stay it seems. When I browse through my old books from before it got to be like this, I’m looking for something that has a slightly larger font, and a wider space between lines (US publications are best), and if a particular book gets my attention, but the readability of it is not good, I can sometimes find it in the right format online and read the part that I need on screen, with enlarged font and spacing. There is the likelihood of headaches peering closely at text on a backlit screen but I can take some precautions.

So, I found what I was looking for: ‘Chakra Therapy’ by Keith Sherwood, printed in 2011. I’d decided to finally get round to learning about the Chakras but it stayed mostly unread because there were some Christian references in the contents list that at a glance put me off. It was this that caused me to put the book aside all those years ago. The fact is, I’m an isolated lapsed Christian living with the Thais for 30 years as a Buddhist in a Buddhist country, and no actual contact with Western people.

Since I decided to follow the Buddha’s Teaching, long ago, the “Thou Shallt Not” shadow of the Church of Scotland, I experienced as an adolescent, still conditions my thought. I forget that this book was written for people living in a Western culture looking out from there into the same universal field we are all part of. There’s a familiarity about this that pulls me out from my contained reality status, living in someone else’s country and into a kind of recognition I can’t find words for yet.

The book is about interacting energy fields and “the universal field,” the atman, meaning “pure consciousness,” or “self,” since the unified field is the true identity of everything in nature. A flicker of attention here because, for me, the sense of Self is illusory in the anthropocentric sense of the word. However, I’ve come round to seeing it another way; if I think of it as Brahma/Atman, devoid of any individualizing influence, no problem because I can wear my Advaita Vedanta hat to blend in with the surroundings.

‘You are an energy being. Each individual is composed of a system of energy fields which interact with each other and the environment they interpenetrate. The universe is permeated by these fields and a human being can be thought of as a localization or concentration in the universal field.’

I understand this immediately and there are these bursts of energy as I read the text. For a moment there’s a sense of joyful déjà vu… I know this fundamentally! But then there’s confusion; all those years ago I chose not to pursue it, unwilling to engage with something I knew nothing about, embedded in my Western separationism and now I’m stuck with age-related eyesight difficulty and headaches (PHN). It’s the Judeo-Christian Tradition I was born into: “The notion that humans are incomplete and that they can become separated from the universal field is held as an objective reality in the Judeo-Christian world.” That’s what it is! The book straightens out tangled thoughts about Christianity I’ve been burdened with for years

“The doctrine of separation, which is at the root of orthodox theology and is the cause of so much misunderstanding and unnecessary suffering, is the foundation of orthodox psychology as well. Orthodox psychology built its towers on the shoulders of Newtonian and Cartesian thought which saw separation as the natural condition.”

There are so many worthwhile sections on separation and duality here but I need to paraphrase this text to get it to completion. Man faced a continual striving between what was base in his nature and what was noble. He chooses to identify with what is noble in his character and reject what is base which includes the inevitable repression of those elements in his character which he considers ignoble. They are rejected, and rather than being integrated, they are judged, sentenced and become the “others” within himself.

The writer describes how he learned the principles of psycho-spiritual integration a little at a time and thus remembered those hitherto lost and unwanted parts of himself and could recollect “the others” buried within himself. The energy imprisoned within began to be released and the system by which this was developed is presented here in this text, out of necessity in order to understand and integrate the seemingly contradictory parts of how he managed to do it. (More about this later)

Inherently

Ultimate bodhicitta is basically Buddha Nature. We all have Buddha Nature. Every being, every sentient being has Buddha Nature. Every being IS Buddha Nature; not has, but IS Buddha Nature. We are all Buddha Nature; we all are Buddha. […]

Buddha Nature can never be defiled; it can never be polluted. No matter how much darkness, how much evil we might do, or think, or say, for however long, never, ever, ever can contaminate the nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is beyond all that. Inherently we are completely pure. Inherently we are completely light, no worries. [Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo]

Link to: Great Middle Way, Venerable Tashi Nyima :https://greatmiddleway.wordpress.com/2023/08/04/inherently/

Top micro image: Pollen, Middle micro image: leaf structure ,Lower micro image: oil drops on water

[Editor’s note: I was reading about Fa Xian, the Sixth Century Chinee Buddhist monk who, at the age of sixty, walked overland to India and I thought what is it that drives a person to do something extraordinary like that? Then I listened to Ajahn Sucitto’s Dhamma talk given at the ordination of a young monk and he was talking about the ‘call’ or the whisper that doesn’t have a sound and it doesn’t come from thought. It’s the citta, a special quality you could call faith – except that it doesn’t come from a belief in anything. It seemed to me that the ‘call’ in Ajahn Sucitto’s talk is what Fa Xian heard or became aware of. So, I transcribed some parts of Ajahn’s talk and that is attached at the end of the Fa Xian story for you to decide.]

FAXIAN

Faxian, also referred to as Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien and Sehi, was a Chinese Buddhist monk and translator who traveled by foot from China to India to acquire Buddhist texts. Faxian’s visit to India occurred during the reign of Chandragupta II. He entered the Indian subcontinent through the northwest. His memoirs describe his 10 year stay in India. He visited the major sites associated with the Buddha, as well the renowned centers of education and Buddhist monasteries. He visited Kapilvastu (Lumbini), Bodh Gaya, Benares (Varanasi), Shravasti, and Kushinagar, all linked to events in Buddha’s life. Faxian learned Sanskrit, and collected Indian literature from Pataliputra (Patna), Oddiyana, and Taxila in Gandhara. His memoirs mention the Hinayana (Theravada) and emerging Mahayana traditions, as well as the splintering and dissenting Theravada sub-traditions in 5th-century Indian Buddhism. Before he had begun his journey back to China, he had amassed a large number of Sanskrit texts of his times.

On Faxian’s way back to China, after a two-year stay in Sri Lanka, a violent storm drove his ship onto an island, probably Java. After five months there, Faxian took another ship for southern China, but again it was blown off course and he ended up landing at Mount Lao in what is now Shandong in northern China, 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of the city of Qingdao. He spent the rest of his life translating and editing the scriptures he had collected. These were influential to the history of Chinese Buddhism that followed. Faxian wrote a book on his travels, filled with accounts of early Buddhism and the geography and history of numerous countries along the Silk Road, as they were, at the turn of the 5th century CE. He wrote about cities like Taxila, Pataliputra, Mathura, and Kannauj in Madhyadesha. He also wrote that inhabitants of Madhyadesha eat and dress like Chinese people. He declared Patliputra to be a prosperous city. He returned in 412 and settled in what is now Nanjing. In 414, he wrote (or dictated) Foguoji (A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms; also known as Faxian’s Account). He spent the next decade, until his death, translating the Buddhist sutras he had brought with him from India.

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The Call  

[Excerpts from a Dhamma talk by Ajahn Sucitto showing on You Tube, link at the end of this text.]

This ordination ceremony is the beginning, the entry point, and we can all perhaps resonate with the sense that there’s an occasion here. Someone is making a declaration to put aside the normal, the ‘knowns,’ the familiar forms of the domestic situation, the job, the family. Put aside having things my own way, we come to serve.

All these opportunities, we gave them up. We gave them up because they weren’t taking us far enough. Something else started to call; a sense of the ‘call; it’s something that’s not about what normally shapes our lives. Something else begins to whisper, or call in a louder voice than all that. It’s Faith – doesn’t mean a belief in anything. The way I understand it is, my home is in the world of sense consciousness; sight, sound, touch, hearing, odours, fragrance and the measuring mind, the thinking, planning, opinionizing, dogmatic, believing, mind. It moves around the other senses, deciding, judging, comparing, contrasting and reflects upon itself, thinks about its thoughts, thinks about its ideas, thinks about its psychologies. It’s very engrossing, gets very dense and becomes a territory called ‘Mine.’

Other people are in their world. It’s Her world or it’s His world – not My world. There’s conflict, disappointment, frustration. Everything is flooded with dogma media, chat shop, chat shows, chat rooms. People chat, chat, chat, opinions about this, opinions about that; this-that, this-that, Right-wing, left-wing, middle wing, going up, going down and the whole thing blabbing away and you’re thinking about your own opinions about yourself.

Then there is the ‘Call’ – not necessarily a sound, it’s some sense of, ‘I want to get out of this, even though I’m looked after, well fed. I’m not being brutalized. I’ve got a car or a flat or a partner’. Even though I’ve got a reasonable deal in life, compared with some people, I’m still not satisfied and this isn’t taking me anywhere that really makes my life feel bright, clear, confident. And that something begins to dawn, a sign of Faith.

The Buddha said its root condition is actually not a belief in anything but the realization that things don’t work, nothing fits… there’s got to be something better than this (dukkha). Maybe this is the point where we begin to recognize some sense of ‘I am,” a sense of being that’s not a thought, it’s not a possession, it’s a sense that’s not associated with sight, sound or all the other senses. This is the citta, it’s a kind of an immaterial quality whereby we’re able to review and get a perspective on what the six senses are bringing in.

That’s what enables us to recognize this is not my true home, this is the building, these are the clothes, that is my name on the passport but it’s is not my true home. My home is something more fundamental. We begin to recognize as soon as we step back from just adopting what’s seen or heard or thought, that it’s enough to just barely notice it. This is hearing, this is a sound, this is a sight, or this is a thought. This is feeling stirred-up, this is feeling disappointed, this is feeling irritated, this is feeling glad. We step back from it and notice there’s an awareness of it, and there’s something else here that could support you – not easily revealed without quite a considerable amount of cultivation, purification, and clearing away and firming up of this experience, this, citta, the awareness; firming it up till it becomes a refuge and the Buddha said this is the refuge, there is no other refuge.

Early on, in my own situation, my own life, I had the certainty that something wasn’t working, even though I was ticking all the boxes and I was in Thailand and that was supposed to be interesting and fun and so on. But, no… it wasn’t working, what do I do next? So, I stumble into one of these meditation sessions, meditate for Fifteen minutes. I thought well… it’s worth a try. Just sit and be with your breathing for Fifteen minutes, but…‘Whoa!’ The mind was going all over the place and I couldn’t watch one breath. But I was able to recognize there was something there that was able to see my mind going like a crazy monkey. This is,  of course, the citta (awareness). ‘Okay I don’t know about that right now, what I need to have, is the encouragement and support to get that measuring mind, with all its wishes and wills, tethered down. So, I’ll go to a monastery. When I go there, I won’t have so much sense impact and so many choices.’

So, I got there, and thought well, it’s testing to just unplug, but I could do this for a couple of weeks. I could sense something stirring, something awakening because when I left Thailand to get a new visa, things were different. I had decided to spend a couple of months travelling around in Malaysia and Indonesia, but all I wanted to do was sit and meditate. So, I went back to the monastery and decided to stay there for a while. They didn’t have anagārika in the place I was, so I became a sāmaṇera. After six months I decided to stop thinking about how long I was planning to stay there because the measuring mind cannot comprehend what’s going on or where this is coming from, you just have to trust the process.

And that’s what it is, essentially; something wants to do this, something wants to wake up. This is special, this is sacred, and it comes from that Call. There’s the mind, then there’s the body. So what does the body reveal by itself? The body is not seen or heard, by itself. It has a sensitivity to it that is twofold. There is a tactile sense; it’s always being touched by furniture and clothes. Other times there’s just space all around except for say the sensation of feet touching the ground.  

The body also has an inner sense which deals with things like being intense, relaxed, excited, angry, sick and in this very body is the beginning of my world. My world begins right here, and this is where you travel, right through to the end. It’s here that we practice breathing, sensing the energy of the body moving within the body. How the body brightens up when we breathe in and gets calm when you breathe out – basic meditation, and that quality of brightening and subsiding is not a physical sense it’s an energetic sense. In this you’ve got something that will never leave you as long as you’re alive. It acts as an inner refuge. where we can contemplate our emotions and thoughts and yet not get caught up in them. When we feel things like worry, anger the body reacts. Anger flushes into our face, fear cramps around our belly, excitement thumps into our heart.

As for thinking, there are all these forms of contact that stir, arouse, disappoint, excite and present possibilities of grasping. Thinking is the king and leader. At the drop of a hat, the thinking mind will proliferate immense scenarios of ‘my’ world and immense pantomimes of other people and their world. A major part of our training, is how to notice the tendency to proliferate and to realize this is what we need to get free from.

There is a way, and this way is supported by the presence of the body which doesn’t proliferate, has no future, no past, does not establish me and mine. It establishes life, and we take refuge in life itself, as long as this life lasts. It’s an extremely helpful tool where the citta gets support gets stabilized by that presence of body. It keeps you grounded. You tune into that and you can sense thoughts, sights, sounds moving around. Their nature is to come and go, they’re interchangeable they’re insecure. And you’ve got this (body and mind). And this practice is centred on meditation,

This is an enormous practice, really when it comes down to it, your cultivation, your meditation is meeting in these places we would normally grasp, normally rush, normally tighten. Meeting these places where reflexes start firing and at that very point, come into awareness and presence and let’s see what we can do.

That’s practice… practice is about driving to the airport… leaving you think, a good two hours to get to the airport but you hit a traffic jam. Watching the clock go tick, tick, tick, and here we are, insecurity, uncertainty… I can’t make what should happen, happen! Ah practice, practice is about cultivating that point where we start to learn about situations that we would normally find infuriating, difficult and we begin to rephrase it… a chance for equanimity to be developed.  A chance for patience to be developed, good. These tremendous strengths, patience, equanimity, resolutions mean you keep returning time and time again to your ground which is steady which will always look after you, which will carry you through life and into death and beyond.

This solemnizes our occasion; this makes it all worthwhile. I wish you all the best.

Ajahn Sucitto

Link to Ajahn Sucitto’s Wikipedia page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Sucitto

Link to Ajahn Sucitto’s Dhamma talk on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_1n3pfnAuw

(You need to go back to the beginning of the video to hear the whole talk)

The Silk Road opened around 139 BCE when China was unified under the Han dynasty. It is thought however, that significant trade occurred for about 1,000 years beforehand. In terms of the development of Buddhism, these early times were notable because of King Ashoka (reigned 322-185 BCE in North India), best known for his renunciation of war, after the conquest of the Kalinga in 261 BCE, and subsequent conversion to Buddhism. He carved Dhamma lessons into cliff rock, onto pillars, and in caves throughout India (some are still visible today), in the hope that he could provide inspiration and guidance to the people of his extensive kingdom. Three languages were used, Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. The Prakrit inscriptions were written in scripts which a commoner could read and understand; the practice of honesty, truthfulness, compassion, benevolence, nonviolence, and considerate behaviour toward all.

After the death of King Ashoka, Buddhism in India went into decline. There was a large-scale reform in Hinduism led by Adi Sankaracharya and the Buddha became a part of Hindu history as an avatar of Vishnu. Another factor for the decline was the Muslim invasion of India and Islamic destruction of Buddhist temples, shrines, and institutions, at Taxila and Nalanda universities. Buddhist monks sought refuge in Nepal and Tibet.  

By this time however, the Buddha’s Teachings had found their way to Central and East Asia by way of the Old Silk Road. The “silk road” itself was an interconnected network of Eurasian trails followed by caravans transporting Chinese silk and other goods to and from China, through Central Asia to the Middle East and Mediterranean countries (distance 6,400 kilometres, 4,000 miles). Few individuals crossed the entirety of the Silk Road, instead relying on a succession of middlemen based at various stopping points along the way. In addition to goods, the network facilitated an exchange of ideas, religions, especially Buddhism.

Buddhism is associated with the rise of the Kushan Empire, present-day Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. Kushan coins show that all along the Silk Road kings and rulers had built monasteries and temples. This combination of patronage, the founding of monasteries, and the rise of Buddhist scholarship all contributed to make Buddhism a very significant presence all over Central Asia.

The greatest success in the spreading of Buddhism came with its introduction to China, where it reinvigorated the existing philosophy, culture, and literature. The Silk Road also reached Korea and Japan. Its encounter with Daoism and Confucianism helped establish deep roots among the peoples of East Asia. Here Buddhism became a religious and spiritual presence as well as the catalyst for greater links with Eurasia.

From the 4th century onward, Chinese pilgrims also started to travel on the Silk Road to India, the origin of Buddhism, in order to get improved access to the original scriptures, the most famous of these is Xuanzang. At age 27, he began his seventeen-year overland journey to India, making his way through various central Asian cities, and through to Northern India. He also spent some time at Nalanda Buddhist monastic university (mahavihara) in ancient Magadha in modern day Bihar, India where he studied with the monk, Śīlabhadra.

On his return to China in 645 CE, Xuanzang was greeted with much honor but he refused all high civil appointments offered by the still-reigning emperor, Emperor Taizong of Tang. Instead, he retired to a monastery and devoted his energy to translating Buddhist texts until his death in 664 CE. According to his biography, he returned with “over six hundred Mahayana and Hinayana texts, seven statues of the Buddha and more than a hundred śarīra relics (pearl or crystal-like bead-shaped objects that are apparently found among the cremated ashes of Buddhist spiritual masters).

During the fifth and sixth centuries C.E., merchants played a large role in the spread of Buddhism. The moral and ethical teachings of Buddhism were found to be an appealing alternative to previous religions. As a result, merchants supported Buddhist monasteries along the Silk Roads. In return, the Buddhists gave the merchants somewhere to stopover. Merchants then spread Buddhism to foreign encounters as they travelled. Merchants also helped to establish diaspora within the communities they encountered and over time, their cultures were based on Buddhism. Because of this, these communities became centers of literacy and culture with well-organized marketplaces, lodging, and storage.

At the Mediterranean end of the Silk Road, the Greeks were the first Europeans to embrace Buddhism, centuries before the advent of Christianity, and there is evidence that the first sculptors to depict the Buddha in the form of statues were of Greek descent. These were the first anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha himself. Before this innovation, the Buddha was only represented through his symbols (an empty throne, the Bodhi Tree, Buddha footprints, the Dharmachakra, the Dharma Wheel).

Buddhism flourished under the Indo-Greeks, the Milindapañha (English publication:  available: ‘Questions of Milinda’) dated between 100 BC and 200 AD, is a dialogue between the Indian Buddhist sage Nāgasena, and the 2nd century BC Indo-Greek King Menander I of Bactria, in Sāgalā, present-day Sialkot. The book speaks of the encounter of two civilizations — Hellenistic Greece and Buddhist India — and is of continuing relevance as the wisdom of the East meets the modern Western world. King Milinda poses questions about dilemmas raised by Buddhist philosophy that we might ask today. And Nagasena’s responses are full of wisdom, wit, and helpful analogies.

Great Buddhist scholars always looked at the Silk Road as a connecting thread with what they regarded as the founding values of Buddhism. With the 7th Century invasion of Islam in Central Asia, the transmission of Buddhism started to disappear. An increasing Muslim dominance all along the route made it difficult for Buddhist monks and pilgrims to travel between India and China, and the Silk Road transmission between Eastern Buddhism and Indian Buddhism eventually came to an end.

Buddhism recovered in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the “golden age” of Chan (known today as Zen).  Chan Buddhism spread south to Vietnam as Thiền and north to Korea as Seon, and, in the 13th century, east to Japan as Japanese Zen. Pure Land Buddhism also became popular during this period and was often practiced together with Chan.

(More next week)

Header Image: 4th Century Chinese pilgrim monk, Xuanzang

The Buddhist concept of anattā appears in a thought window: “non-self” – no unchanging, permanent self or essence can be found in any phenomenon. And to begin with, there is the story of Vajira, a Buddhist nun (bhikkhuni), one of the earliest women adepts in Buddhist history.
While Vajira was meditating, she was confronted by Mara, a malignant celestial demon king, and he asked about the origin and creator of her “Being”, i.e., her soul. She responded by comparing one’s “Being” to a chariot, showing that it had no permanent existence but was made up of constituent parts: Is it the wheels, the framework, the ropes, the spokes of the wheel?’ None of these things are the chariot but the aggregate of such physical parts composed in certain ways is conventionally understood as a chariot. Just as, with an assemblage of parts, the word ‘chariot’ is used, when the 5 aggregates (khandas) are present in a human, there’s the convention ‘a being.’

Returning to present-times, the following is a transcript of parts of a dougsdharma video by onlinedharma.org: “As the chariot is being taken apart, at what point in the dis-assembly does the chariot cease to be a chariot? Consider the assertion of non-self: What we are is a complex process, a causally inter-related set of parts essentially that creates a sense of self over a period of time. This radically displaces our ordinary everyday sense of self, replacing it with a much wiser and deeper understanding of the way things really are. I would assert that a similar kind of thing happens when we contemplate the complexity of artificial intelligence because, after all, it’s got to have these incredibly complex trained neural networks behind it. In the same way we might say human utterances come out of a very complex network of neurons – literal neurons rather than artificial neurons in a computer.

Let’s look again at how a person is like a chariot made up of parts, in particular five parts which are known as the Five Aggregates. [1. form (the body) 2. sensations (vedana) 3. perceptions (sañña) 4. mental activity or formations (sankhara) 5. consciousness (viññāna)]

All of these five groups of processes are causally interrelated and causally interacting. That causal interrelation among these five different parts is what creates our idea of a self, a person. Then, it’s important to remember that each of these parts can be broken down into further parts.

Form, the human body, can be broken down into the elements and each of the four mental parts can be broken down into subparts. It’s a complex interrelation of many different parts that are basically coming into being and going out of existence over a period of time.

 A lot of this I think, mirrors and reflects what we are seeing now in artificial intelligence; that the self is no different from a very complex causally interreacting machine except for the biology part of it. Now, certainly we can’t see a computer’s mental parts just as we can’t see the mental parts of another human being that is standing in front of us – we infer them based on the behaviour of the object in front of us.

If we see the person in front of us behaving in the way a normal person does, we assume that they have a mind, they have mental parts. Now we may think that the artificial intelligence programs around us are too simple, that they don’t quite meet the criteria of sentience or intelligence. It’s possible we believe that, maybe we’re right, that’s true. But if it is, I would submit that we only need to wait because these programs are getting exponentially more complex, more powerful over time, new versions of these programs will be coming out in the next few years and so these points we’re going to have to meet in the future and probably in the near future.

I think nothing displaces our literal sense of self more than the contemplation of these kinds of artificial intelligences. And the idea that we can now create something that is in certain very deep respects indistinguishable from a human in the way that it interacts with the world. Following that line of thought, I decided to ask one of these programs, the most famous publicly available one which is ChatGPT a question about this about what it made of this relationship between contemporary advances in artificial intelligence and the Buddhist concept of non-self and it had an interesting response.”

Some experts have suggested that the development of advanced AI could challenge our conventional notions of self and identity, raising questions about what it means to be conscious and self-aware. For example, if we were to create an AI system that was capable of learning and evolving in ways that resembled human cognition, would we consider that system to have a ‘self’ or a sense of identity?

In this sense the Buddhist concept of non-self could be seen as a helpful framework for understanding the relationship between consciousness and self in the context of AL. By recognizing that the self is not a fixed unchanging entity, bt rather a dynamic and ever-evolving process, we may be better equipped to grapple with the challenges and opportunities presented by advances in AI and related technologies,

So, I’ll just leave that response there and say that we ae living now in pretty amazing times.”

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Link to doug’s dharma video. Start from the beginning or join the talking at 13.31: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp0zpOYkqMI