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.

Continued next week:  October 7, 2024

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 next week: 24 October 2024

Ajahn Sucitto

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]

Ajahn Sucitto

To establish mindfulness and full knowing in daily life relies on filtering the input of stuff coming at us from all directions, because the sheer deluge can overwhelm us. Because we build up saṇkhāra tracks and programs based on contact, we need to be responsible about what we give attention to. Part of cultivation therefore is about turning away from input and actions that pull the mind into craving or aversion or distraction. Hence the function of deep attention is to be discriminative. Rather than have the mind absorb into whatever is being pumped out by the media, we cultivate sense-restraint so that the citta doesn’t compulsively go out into the sense-fields without a filter. As in cases like the following: you’re walking down the street, or browsing the internet – do you need to gaze into the shop windows and advertisements? Does that hand you over to the consumer demon? Do you need to immediately switch on your phone as soon as you get up in the morning – get busy, get out there before you fully know where you are? With wise reflection, you can recognize a habitual saṇkhāra, and give attention to one or two long in-breaths and out-breaths to balance its impetus.

Recollecting Dhamma themes adds further support to the mind and heart. As in the case of the Triple Gem, recollection entails bringing up a concept and dwelling on it steadily and repeatedly until it touches the citta. Then a felt sense is established that can steady, rein in or gladden the heart. This process goes deeper than merely thinking: people can think about anything without necessarily reflecting on how the heart has been affected. And we can forget to think deeply about what would serve us best – like attuning to integrity. So, when you have the five precepts, you can make a daily practice of checking in with the harmlessness, honesty, reliability and clarity that they signify, and what heart-tones they give rise to. You may have wavered from these, but with recollection, you repeatedly bring them to mind, gain their meaning and settle into that. From there you can review your actions and attitudes towards other people, other creatures, and material resources: am I living with an attitude of respect towards the world I inhabit? Can I bring forth bright kamma – or at least turn away from dark kamma?

Once you’ve established values, you can recollect them, and linger on them until you feel the tonal qualities of non-violence, integrity, honesty, modesty, generosity and so on. These tones carry the energy of the value, and as you linger on them, you can discern a bodily effect: you feel cleaner, lighter and firmer. Worry, anger, passion and despair, on the other hand, have negative bodily effects. In simple instances like these you learn a useful truth: heart and body share the same energy, and the purity of the energy of bright intentions clears and strengthens them. This consolidated effect is called ‘goodness’, ‘merit’, or ‘value’ (puñña). Puñña steadies and supports you, not only when it comes to meditation, but also with resilience in the face of crisis. So, the advice is to recollect bright intentions that you’ve sustained in the course of each day; linger on the goodness and let the puñña sustain you. Shifts can then happen – if you let them.

Beware of idealism though. With that attitude the mind grabs hold of the ideas, proliferates around them, and creates a self who does or doesn’t have those qualities. All this contracts the heart and cuts off the body – until you lose touch with the body altogether. So, when people are not in touch with the embodied feel of the good heart, there are quarrels over truth, peace, love and freedom and the like. Passions or fears get mixed up with those ideals; and as the heart contracts and clinging to a view occurs, a righteous self is born.

I remember an incident in the accommodation block of a centre during a silent meditation retreat when one night two people started arguing over the relative importance given to compassion in Tibetan or Theravada Buddhism, and which was more compassionate. They were talking so loudly that the person in the next room started beating on the wall to get them to be quiet! Obviously, they missed the point: if you really get the feel of a value, you can’t quarrel over who’s more compassionate – because the grabbing, the contraction of the citta that accompanies attachment to a view, doesn’t support a heart-opening quality like compassion. Needing to be right is a source of suffering!

Another heart-opening recollection is of mortality. This is because the perception of mortality causes some of the sticky stuff the mind contracts around to lose its grip. Where’s the pressure to get, consume, or even be, something when everything you get, you lose? What is really worth giving time and attention to? If you are to die this very night, why hold grudges? Such recollection supports the quality of dispassion (virāga). With dispassion, we get a clear perspective: better centre attention in your values and your puñña. The recollection of mortality also reminds us that our energy, mental agility and health are finite and dwindling. We must use such resources in a way that will enhance or free our lives, or we will waste the time in fantasies and frustrations. Used wisely then, the recollection of death keeps the heart attuned to the good, the clear and the present.

One of the greatest sources of affliction and negative kamma is a loss of empathy with others. In modern urban life, we may experience many people through media stereotypes, or in the no man’s land of busy streets and public places. People then become ‘other’ – other nationalities, other customs, etc. – and we may feel either nothing, or mistrust, for them. In a relational field with such a bias, indifference and brutality find room to breed. But if we consider the common ground – that, like us, others have to endure stress, illness, bereavement and death – this generates empathy (anukampa), the basis of all forms of goodwill. For example, a friend of mine recounted having a picture of famine victims and people with terrible afflictions, and whenever he was starting to feel irritable or lose perspective, he would look at these individuals. Then he’d experience a sense of compassion for the human realm, as well as gratitude for the blessing of being healthy, free from punishment and well-fed.

Can we see the actions of others in a more tolerant or reflective way? ‘Other people’ are experiences that can teach you a lot. We can get good advice from wise people – and also learn from how they act and speak. Confused or misguided people can strengthen our patience and wisdom: ‘She’s showing me how “not to act! Thank you!’ And we can broaden empathy to recollect that ‘others too have joy and despair, humour and fear, birth, families, and their kamma – then why don’t I relate to others in the way that I’d like them to relate to me?’ Morality is empathy in terms of behaviour.

Another classic recollection feels disturbing at first. It’s the recollection of the unattractive aspects of the body (asubha); that is, the organs and fluids that lie under the skin: in fact, most of what makes up a body and keeps it going. The aim of this recollection is not to make us morbid, but to relieve the heart from obsession with the current notion of beauty. How much effort, time and money goes into glamourizing the most superficial aspect of our inheritance? How much anxiety, vanity, jealousy and passion does this give rise to? How much deep happiness or contentment can the outward appearance of the body bring? “And as you can’t see much of your own body, the outward appearance is for other people; it’s not even ‘your’ body.

After the initial shock of recognizing what anyone’s body consists of, what can arise is a cooling effect. This is the tone of dispassion. Then we associate with others, not through outward appearance but through the heart, and our perspective opens accordingly.

All these recollections, if lingered on with mindfulness, will evoke a steadying tone. This tone affects the body’s nervous energies; we feel stable, cool and open to a degree that exceeds a purely emotional effect. Such heart-opening qualities, if you give them deep attention and linger on them with mindfulness, lead into a place of stillness. Furthermore, even when the heart gets shaken with fear or grief or other forms of suffering, the puñña of repeated recollection is that its embodied effect can still be accessed. Then the reactive saṇkhāra that would otherwise rush out as ‘I’m this, it’s not fair, I can’t stand it’ (and so on) doesn’t arise, or having arisen, ceases quickly. It also leads into the place of stillness that is unoccupied, yet without boundaries – this is where intention and impulse come to rest and kamma ends.

[Continued next week 5 September 2024]

Link to the original, download:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/458-kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma

By Ajahn Sucitto

(From last week): Thus, the old perception shapes me; in this case, as a fearful or confident person. And I act from that basis. This is why it is said: ‘Contact is the cause of kamma.’

To summarize: contact touches the citta, attention focuses it, and intention launches its response. This dynamic and formative process and the ‘track’ or ‘formation’ that it leaves in the citta is a saṇkhāra – the formative aspect of mental kamma, and what it forms. Saṇkhārā are crucial because they shape both action and actor – following their tracks, I become the tracker.

Now you could say that all meaning is factual: in the above instance, maybe a dog did bite me when I was four. That’s why I see dogs like that, and it’s quite reasonable. And it may well be the case that men in uniforms/red-headed women/people who talk fast (etc., etc.) have frightened me or let me down at some time or another. And it may also be the case that my fear or suspicion is based purely on somebody else’s opinion. But what the Buddha is pointing to is not historical circumstance or the attitudes of others – over which we have no say – but how fresh action arises when the felt sense that comes with designation-contact pushes a button on the citta and the established meaning jumps up.

What we might be encouraged to do then, is not to run away from, poison, slander, or get paranoid about dogs or people, but to handle the felt meaning and assess its validity in the here and now. Because to base one’s responses on one piece of data alone, even though it touches a sensitive spot, is only going to intensify the impression and bind you to it. Yes, as that’s a sensitive spot, that felt meaning should be responded to – but with skilful attention both to the actual dog, now (‘Is this dog, here and now, growling or baring its teeth? Or just sniffing around?’), and to your state of mind (feel the fear and pause on reacting to it). This is the kamma of handling and reviewing contact, attention and impulse – the kamma that leads to the end of further kamma (from that historical bias, at any rate).

Otherwise, it can be the case that even when there are no dogs (and so on) around, one can still be anxious that one might come by soon. Sounds ridiculous? No, paranoia is part of social life, even encouraged: look out for ‘suspicious’ people, Communists, radicals, atheists, men wearing hoodies, etc. … and when the citta collapses under all this, it’s chronic anxiety and medication. However, if we at least get the idea that these felt meanings are established in the citta, not in the object, we might also acknowledge the possibility that these historically-based perceptions could be reset or disbanded; also that positive ones – such as those associated with goodwill, generosity, integrity, and the many qualities perfected by the Buddha, proclaimed in his Dhamma teachings, and practised by his disciples – could be established. These perceptions can help the heart settle and bring forth the truth of its own goodness. This is the rationale behind devotion and recollection.

Pūja’: Ritual that Brightens the Heart

In Buddhism, and in other religions, access to and dwelling in the heart-tone of bright kamma is occasioned by devotion and recollection. In Buddhism, this is called ‘pūja’ – an act of raising up, and honouring that which is worthy of our respect. The very fact that there are human models and actions that one can feel deep respect for is itself a blessing to take note of: honouring opens and uplifts the heart. With pūja, we attend to a skilful felt meaning, linger there and allow the effects to nourish the citta. From this basis, it’s likely that inclinations or even specific ideas in line with bright kamma will arise. Either that, or the mind easily settles into a state that supports meditation. This is how and why one should linger in any bright kamma.

So, in the act of honouring the Buddha, one first opens the heart in respect and brings to mind the meaning of an Awakened One: someone of deep clarity; a speaker of truths that penetrate and bring healing to the human condition; one accomplished in understanding and action – a sage whose teachings can still be tested and put into action. If one has a Buddha-image, it’s something that should be held with respect – one cleans it, illuminates it with light, and offers flowers and incense to it. We place it on an altar, bow to it and chant recollections and teachings.

This is not a mindless activity; we use ritual means and resound words and phrases because this full engagement embodies and strengthens the quality of respect in a way that thinking can’t. With the openness of heart that these attitudes bring, any aspect of the teaching that’s brought to mind goes deeper. The act of offering that begins a pūja is a case in point: offering flowers “symbolizes bringing forth virtue, offering light is about bringing forth clarity, and incense does the same for meditative concentration. In this way, pūja introduces the heart to important Dhamma themes.

Pūja is especially helpful when people perform it as a group. Then we are participating in the Dhamma as both the expression and the Way of awakening, as well as in the collective commitment to, and engagement with, that Dhamma. This collective engagement ritualizes the ‘Sangha’, that is, the assembly of disciples. Chanting in a group has a harmonizing, settling effect: sonorous and unhurried, it steadies bodily and mental energies and supports an atmosphere of harmony with fellow practitioners. Tuning in and participating brings us out of ourselves and into a deep resonance with heart-impressions of the sacred. We can be touched by a sense of timeless stability, purpose and beauty. If these intentions, felt senses and recollections are established regularly, we know where to find good heart, how to attend to it, and how to allow ourselves to be uplifted. Such kamma feels bright.

The Benefits of Recollection

‘At any time when a disciple of the noble ones is recollecting the Tathāgata … the Dhamma … the Sangha … their own virtues: “[They are] untorn, unbroken, unspotted, unsplattered, liberating, praised by the wise, untarnished, conducive to concentration.” At any time when a disciple of the noble ones is recollecting virtue, his mind is not overcome with passion, not overcome with aversion, not overcome with delusion. His mind heads straight, based on virtue. And when the mind is headed straight, the disciple of the noble “ones gains a sense of the goal, gains a sense of the Dhamma, gains joy connected with the Dhamma. In one who is joyful, rapture arises. In one who is rapturous, the body grows calm. One whose body is calmed experiences ease. In one at ease, the mind becomes concentrated.

‘Mahānāma, you should develop this recollection of virtue while you are walking, while you are standing, while you are sitting, while you are lying down, while you are busy at work, while you are resting in your home crowded with children.’

(A.11:12; B. BODHI, TRANS.)

The expressions that are used in recollecting Dhamma are that it is experienced directly (not just as a theory), is of timeless significance, and is accessible and furthering for those who practise it. So that gives us an encouragement to look into what the Buddha taught and modelled: the way to the end of suffering and stress. With this, we recollect aspiration, learning and commitment as our common touchstone, and suffering and ignorance as our common challenge. Then we no longer feel so alone with our difficult mind-states, and we can handle them in a more open and aware way. Recollection of Sangha reminds us that although there is greed, anger and confusion in the human world, there are also people who cultivate a way out of that.

If you use pūja on a regular basis, it aligns you to the ‘Triple Gem’ – Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha – by presenting content in terms of images, ideas and themes, and values and practices that guide the heart. It also occasions acts of steering and composing attention. So pūja works both on what the mind is dealing with, and how it operates [Continued next week 22 August 2024].

Link to the original:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/458-kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma